Civ 3 GOTM 7 *Spoilers* Thread

[Rain]

Originally posted by JoeM

But are you saying that the benefits of the Great Library continue to be awarded after you lose possesion of it? I must've been lkiving in a cave not to know about this if it's true.

Simply yes or no?

Cheers.

No it jsut floods tech beyond the education when you capture it then goes obsolete the same turn. SO basically you will jump up to the current state of knowledge discovered by other civs.

 

[Cartouche Bee]

Archer99, 80 cities and a domination victory at hand! Those are pretty big cities cause you need about 95 cities with a control foot print of 20 squares (with no overlap) each to hit domination. Great job!!

CB

 

[Sullla]

The Great Library giving techs beyond Education is not an exploit, and I don't consider it one. My point was that signing a ROP agreement, using it to move lots of units next to the city with the GL, and then breaking it to get a ton of free techs is a cheap way to win the game. Does it work? Absolutely. But it's a fragrant abuse of the AI, and clearly not the way the game is meant to be played. I recognize that players will do this because it provides an enormous advantage, but I hope that some will have the decency to avoid an exploit like this and respect the way the game is meant to be played. Basing your whole game strategy around a betrayal of an AI civ to get techs... that seems pretty cheap to me.

Cartouche Bee, congratualtions on your win I also won a diplomatic victory earlier, but with a considerably lower score. I expect you will be among the GOTM leaders again.

 

[Elfi Wolfe]

You mean I wasted all my time and effort from the start of the game to just barely make the great Library ahead of the russian wasn't a good idea.

now that education has hit I am just falling back again.

Oh well at least every civ is polite to me now.

 

[punkbass2000]

Originally posted by Sullla
But it's a fragrant abuse of the AI,

I assume this is supposed so be 'flagrant'.

Unless you're ripping them off for incense

 

[Archer99]

I base my whole strategy around betrayal of the computer civs. The fact that I get a bunch of techs one time is gravy. I make trade pacts I never intend to honor by severing the road to their capitol. I make military alliances I plan to break as soon as the computer's forces are fully engaged. I sign RoP to sneak attack. The game doesn't let you do this over and over you know. You do it once and its a very long time before you can do it again. If I actually tried to pay the absurd amounts of tribute I agree to, it would bankrupt my nation and I can't afford to lose all my temples and barracks. The computer does RoP sneak attack to you if you don't do it to them first so first strike is totally legit. Success through betrayal is historically accurate in my opinion.

 

[Sirian]

Archer99 posted:
The computer does RoP sneak attack to you if you don't do it to them first

BS.

The computer will sneak attack, that's true, but it's nothing like what you do. It's not even on the same continent, much less in the same ballpark.

If there are rails, they will move ONE unit to the target of their choice and attack, war is declared, and the rest of their units then have to contend with your cultural territory under war conditions.

If there are no rails, they will move along your roads, and they move stacks around prior to being able to get a unit to their target of choice, but NEVER with the intent of "moving into position, then attacking". They attack their chosen target at the first opportunity.

You move all the units you want for the attack into position first, then attack. Correct? So your justification that "the AI does it too" is dishonest.

Success through betrayal is historically accurate in my opinion.

Spare us. You admit that your playstyle is based around betrayal. The game does not in ANY way accurately reflect the severity of consequences that befall those who betray to the degree that you are undertaking, so falling back on history as a defense for your strategy goes beyond ludicrous. Way beyond.

Relying on "historically accurate" is a double-edged sword that will slice your tactics to ribbons. Let's take the "Right of Passage" betrayal, and stipulate solely for the sake of argument that an ally would ever be stupid enough to allow your nation to move its entire army into attack position outside the city with their Great Library. You betray them, attack, grab all the scrolls, burn the city to the ground and run. You're deep in their territory and would have to get that knowledge home to do anything about it. Most if not all of it would be lost or destroyed in the process. Where is the historical accuracy in your civ jumping from backward boobs to enlightened state-of-the-art learned men by setting foot into a library? They don't have fax machines for you to call up and send facsimiles of the scrolls home, and there's no way to copy the contents of the entire library onto a hard drive and smuggle it out before anyone knows what happened. Doesn't work that way. I could go on here, point out the absurdity in historical context of all the various forms of betrayal you've outlined, but what's the point? You don't care, and anybody who does will see through you anyway.

The fact that you are one mind who has godlike power over not only national policy, but armies in the field, research, everything, and not for one lifetime but the entire timeline of the civ, leaves "historically accurate" entirely out of the picture. Nothing about Civ III steps anywhere near the concept of "historically accurate". The history elements provide flavor and context for a play-as-god build-and-compete game. That's all. Therefore the only legitimate justification for anything in the game, is the game itself, and you show contempt for the game and abuse it and its limitations at every turn.

The game allows you to do what you do. You don't need justification to do something the game allows, but don't try to pretend you're playing within the spirit of the game. Nobody is going to buy it. You're following the rules of this contest and you're entitled to play any way you please. Sullla is also entitled to call a duck a duck, if it quacks.

A term that comes to mind for what you do is "legal cheating". The laws -- the rules of the game -- are not well enough written to cope appropriately with your tactics. Not that what you do should be disallowed, but the consequences for doing so ought to be more appropriately severe.


- Sirian

 

[Bill_in_PDX]

I throw my two cents worth in on the side of Sirian.

I am not a MP fan, but I do tend to play based on the idea of "would this get by anyone in MP?". There is no way a real human opponent is going to let you set up shop on top of their iron, and around their capitol under the guise of a ROP.

You can bet that a real opponent would either attack you first while you are in the open, or would do what I would, set up equal force around your capitol and resources...hey it's a ROP, fair is fair, and if it looked like you were going to attack my GL, I would sell all of the knowledge to other civs to get a alliance against you first.

Your tactic might work once, but you would be earning quite a bad reputation throughout the MP boards, something that would carryover to your next games.

Sometimes I think a good mod to the game would be to have a player log in, and play, while the AI learns from your behaviors, and uses that learning in future games....I know, dreaming again.

On the other hand, if the object of the game is to exploit and or milk the AI for the maximum number of points possible, then you are quick successful and I take my hat off to you

Bill

 

[MiDEvIL]

Originally posted by Archer99
Midevil: Your mistake was building archers instead of mounted warriors.

Yeah i thought that might have been a reason too, that was my first time playing w/ the iroqois so i had no experience at how good people claim mounted warriors are.

Neways right now its 1000 AD (i survived longer than i thought i would) and i have 4 cities (all built within my capitols culture radius) but im still in the midevil age and i dont think a victory is possible, im just trying to maximize whatever little score i can get. (Everyone else is modern age, however impossible that sounds)

i was only 5 turns away from completing GL too in my game (damn persians)

 

[Pygzilla]

Originally posted by Sirian


They don't have fax machines for you to call up and send facsimiles of the scrolls home, and there's no way to copy the contents of the entire library onto a hard drive and smuggle it out before anyone knows what happened.

- Sirian

Personally I always research computers and telecomunications before anything else for just this reason.

 

[Archer99]

I'm just saying that nobody wins by accident on Diety level. The computer has 7 generally cooperative civs all with a substantial head start and a 66% advantage in tech and shields ongoing. You have to exploit something to win. A human player with Diety advantages would never be defeated by another human player under any circumstances so saying if a human would let you do something is a ludicrous measure of what should be allowed.

Taking years for modern ships to cross the ocean is equally realistic as hauling away the knowledge of the library over the 25 or 50 years it takes for the city to be reconquered (if it ever is). I think 25 years is plenty of time to learn how to use guns and make armor and whatnot.

If the computer played as well as a human it would not need diety level advantages to win but the computer doesn't feel bad when it loses and the point of a game is for the human to have fun. Just because the computer is as inept at pulling off a sneak attack as it is every other aspect of the game doesn't mean it isn't trying to use the same tactic I do.

What makes civ 3 good is the variety of ways to tackle the game. I don't think everyone should be straightjacketed into winning the exact same way. If you can win a diplo victory in 1450 that's great but I can't. A human player would never vote you leader of the world if he could crush you militarily BTW.

 

[MiDEvIL]

hmm... yeah, diety isnt exactly a very "fair" difficulty. they probably could have found a way to make the AI more "skillful" and not make it somehow cheat, which is rather unfair and ruins the fun of the game sometimes. Ive seen many games with this before... and i dont like it one bit

Btw: i lost my game =( space race... defeated in 1650 A.D very low score (less than 1000)

 

[MiDEvIL]

Originally posted by Bill_in_PDX

Sometimes I think a good mod to the game would be to have a player log in, and play, while the AI learns from your behaviors, and uses that learning in future games....I know, dreaming again.

Thats a good idea, it would deffinetly solve the AI cheating on diety problem if the AI actually "learned" from a players behavior ... the higher the difficulty the faster the AI would learn or the more it would imitate or counter your tactics (from what its already learned in previous games)... its boring to watch the AI following the same age old tactics, almost always knowing what it will do next.

 

[punkbass2000]

Originally posted by Archer99
A human player would never vote you leader of the world if he could crush you militarily BTW.

Well, he would have to vote for somebody, wouldn't he? But this does bring up something interesting that I hadn't really thought of before: Diplomatic victories in MP. Popularity Contests?

 

[punkbass2000]

Originally posted by MiDEvIL
hmm... yeah, diety isnt exactly a very "fair" difficulty. they probably could have found a way to make the AI more "skillful" and not make it somehow cheat, which is rather unfair and ruins the fun of the game sometimes. Ive seen many games with this before... and i dont like it one bit

Yeah, it WOULD be nice, but it wouldn't be too nice paying $200 for the game, waiting an extra three years, and if you think it's slow now...

 

[Sirian]

Archer99 posted:
I'm just saying that nobody wins by accident on Diety level. ... You have to exploit something to win.

Maybe you do. I don't.

Golf has a handicap system that, nominally, is aimed at giving players of different skill levels an equal chance to win any given round. Players with high handicaps get advantages comparable to those given the AI's in Civ3 on higher difficulty. Players with lower handicaps embrace the system to make the game more interesting for them, rather than a foregone conclusion.

Increasing the difficulty level in Civ3 is not required of you. You can play at dead-even on Regent level, where the AI's play you straight up. The AI routines and algorithms are adequte to defeat many novice players. The AI's ARE skilled, but their skill level is limited, and they suffer from an inhuman level of predictability.

There is a difference between outplaying an opponent and exploiting the rules. You do have to outplay the AI's by a huge margin on deity to win the game, but it can be done and has been done without exploiting loopholes, gaps, and flaws in the rules. Betrayal is intentionally part of the game, but the rules governing that side of the game are incomplete in some ways, incompetent in others. Some things it would be easy for any human to figure out are too complex for the AI to deduce. Either the programmers can't code it, or the code would be too resource-hungry to be practical. Does that mean you should exploit it, just because you can? Does the ability to get away with something mean that you should do it?

If you'll do this to the AI, because you can get away with it, what else might you do because you can get away with it? The game is incapable of enforcing some rules it has or which are implied, but likewise, this tournament is incapable of enforcing all of its rules, either. Is there anywhere that you will draw a line other than "I can get away with it"? If so, where? And why there?

Things you can do, but choose not to do, are called principles. I would expect (hope?) you have some of those in real life. If you do, why? Because there is something to be gained in choosing NOT to do certain things. Some things you could do, and nobody could stop you. They might penalize you later, but they could not prevent you doing those. Other things you might be able to do and get away with, that you would still not do because they harm someone else or yourself. Setting principles and adhering to them enriches a person's life. It also enriches the gaming experience. If you find value in adhering to the rules of this contest, and not reloading or not secretly adding workers to whip camps in a way that would be hard to detect, not hex-editing your save file or employing mods and hacks, or not breaking any of the other rules, why not extend that to the rules within the game?

You're feeding us a line. "Deity AI has so many advantages, you have to cheat it to beat it!" That's just not true. And don't bother to try blurring the line any more in regard to the AI's tactics. If you buy an alliance with a third AI, who is closer to the AI you're targetting than you are, then knowing that your target will likely send its offensive forces at your ally, leaving its territory lightly defended for you to go attack, is not an exploit, that's playing the game. Making trade deals then pillaging a road, over and over, to wring free goodies out of a system inadequately complex to detect what you are doing, is not beating a dumb opponent, it's cheating the game. And you know it.

You can do it if you want, but don't tell us it's the only way to beat the game on deity. I beat GOTM7 without cheating on any of my diplomatic deals. I didn't even go to war at all until the modern age, so up until the endgame, everything I owned I built on my own, acquired on my own, or bought or traded for in deals that I honored. I did have to maneuver the AI's into war to slow their launch or I'd have lost, but I did not send all my army on a RoP Rape to take out their spaceship. I set up my alliances and went to war the old-fashioned way, and let the chips fall where they fall. It was good enough to win, and all the more satisfying to me to beat the game by playing, rather than by exploiting.

It's not even about keeping your word. You can break deals, make betrayals, up to a point. But there's a difference between making an alliance with one nation, then betraying them to ally with one of their enemies -- which is clearly within the spirit and intent of the game -- and a RoP Rape, which is clearly a loophole in the rules. Or silly road pillaging, as if some nation would ever send out its trade caravans and then mysteriously go home and shrug their shoulders if the road was a little torn up, and just forget the whole deal -- especially if they paid in advance. They would demand their payment back, or they would be extremely upset about it, or they would insist on continuing the deal the next year, when the road has been repaired.

Betrayal deserves its due and its place in the game. That's how Firaxis wants it. But they have been clear about rebalancing the game and closing out loopholes through the patch process, too, so there are clearly moves players are undertaking that Firaxis designers do not like. Some of those problems can't be fixed, as I already explained -- just like the GOTM cannot enforce its rule of no reloads. Some things have to go on the honor system.

Deity is there to pose an extreme handicap. You're only half a step short of going all the way over into cheating. You've got the rationale in place. You are already there in spirit.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Matrix, are you reading? You've got a few exploits listed as known but allowed. Why?

If they are allowed for lack of enforcement ability, because you do not believe you could detect them, I submit to you that this is inconsistent with the no-reload rule. If the honor system is good for the no-reload rule, it would work just as well for any other rule you choose to implement.

On the other hand, if there is some rationale for why RoP Rape and a couple other loopholes are OK, would that same rationale not apply to the loopholes and exploits you've marked as off limits? That's the part I don't understand.

I can understand a contest that says, "If the game allows it, it's OK." I can understand a contest that says, "We recognize flaws in the rules of the game, so we're adding our own rules to cover these areas. Here's a list of known exploits, they're all off the table." What I don't get is picking and choosing among the exploits, these are OK but these are not. Doesn't make sense.

If you recognize it as an exploit, doesn't that mean by definition that you know it's against the spirit of the game?


- Sirian

 

[Archer99]

The computer does get extremely upset when you break trade deals, MPP, RoP and alliances. For at least 100 turns after a RoP betrayal no computer opponent will sell you anything. No one will ever loan you money or pay anything upfront ever again. If you break trade deals and alliances they eventually want 7 luxuries and 2 resources for 1 luxury but when you have 7 of the 8 luxuries and many multiples of each you can afford to be "generous". It got to the point where I couldn't buy a tech everyone else had for even 3000 gold, but once I had military traditions nothing else mattered. You can force them to give you in war what they would never give you in peace, over and over.

The Romans would never make any agreement with me nor any trade. They always threw the German thing in my face even after 3000 years. Of course eventually I beat them into submission. After the 3rd forced surrender they even agreed to an RoP. I really liked that. The Romans being all snooty for 3000 years finally submitting to unconditional surrender. The Romans blew it when they traded the weakened Egyptians military traditions and I was able to force it as a term of surrender. 50 turns later the Romans were giving away the secrets of Replaceable Parts and that was game, set and match. In my game the Romans were king because they never let themselves get drawn into all the conflicts I forced. The diplomatic penalties are staggering but a conqueror cares not about such things since terms of surrender have nothing to do with diplomacy AFAIK.

 

[Cartouche Bee]

There seems to be alot of the pot calling the kettle black going on here. When one states they 'pull out the old smoke n mirrors' or admits to 'diplomatic tricks' and then complains about another's strategy as exploitive, then I can only consider the argument as insincere and classify it as 'trolling'.



CB

 

[Sullla]

Archer99, let me re-echo Sirian in saying that it is completely possible to win on Deity without using exploits that abuse the AI. I am currently creating a webpage about my game that will lay out my game in detail; you might be curious to see a game that played out completely in contrast to your own.

There's no need for me to say again why I disagree with your playing style, as Sirian has done a far better job than I ever could. There is no way that the reputation hit is in proportion to the abuse that the human deals out; it should be more on the order of every other civ in the game immediately decalaring war on the rogue civ that committed such a heinous offense, and not ending it until that civ were destroyed. What do you think the response of the world would be if the US suddenly turned on its allies and used the troops were have stationed in Europe to raze a city like Paris or Berlin to the ground? America would become an outlaw state; it would be attacked by everyone else on earth and destroyed. How could anyone ever make a deal with such a civ again? But you said yourself even the Romans gave you a ROP after a long enough time, which I'm sure you used to take out their remaining largest cities. The problem is that you gain too much from this with too little penalty; as many as over 20 techs for free at the cost of "no more trade deals" is no penalty at all.

There seems to be alot of the pot calling the kettle black going on here. When one states they 'pull out the old smoke n mirrors' or admits to 'diplomatic tricks' and then complains about another's strategy as exploitive, then I can only consider the argument as insincere and classify it as 'trolling'.

Cartouche Bee, do you really think that the argument that Sirian and I make is "trolling"? 'Smoke and mirrors' is a phrase that has grown up in the RBD succession games that refers to using a mixture of bombardment units, pillagers, and anything else that can be scrounged up to hold off overwhelming enemy forces. In my game, that meant using 5 artillery and 2 infantry to hold off a stack of over 20 Russian infantry by bluffing and feinting at various targets while bombarding them down to size. This has nothing to do with exploiting the game, it's a matter of using what meagre forces you have in a strategic way to hold off massive enemy forces.

My 'diplomatic tricks' consist of things such as being the broker for all world contact, the world map broker between civs, trading resources for the maximum possible value, buying a tech at 4th civ price to trade with another civ for a different tech at 5th civ price, and getting a MPP with every other civ before starting a war with Russia. In short, diplomatic tricks means using the diplomacy system to get the maximum value possible out of what resources your civ has. Diplomatic tricks fall far, FAR short of what Archer99 is describing. At no point in time did I EVER break a standing agreement with any civ. Period.

I'm increasingly coming to the conclusion that the only way to score highly in the GOTM is to use massive exploits of the AI in order to get more score. Hey, it's all about who comes in first, right? How you get there apparently doesn't matter. Ever since I first saw (in the forum for GOTM5) someone say "Russia was so much stronger than me, so I HAD to use a ROP to take them out lol!" and others claim this was a great strategy, I began to have my doubts about the purpose behind the competition. I love the GOTM, and I personally could care less what my score is - it's all about discussing the game with others and seeing what I can learn from it. But if the GOTM is all about seeing who can abuse the AI the most to rack up the most points... then maybe I'm not so interested in playing the GOTM anymore.

 

[Sirian]

Cartouche Bee:

"Smoke n Mirrors" means getting something accomplished when it would appear you do not have the resources to do so. This means being creative, it does not mean being exploitive. For a clear example of what I mean by smoke and mirrors, check out This Report.

I didn't want to give out all the details of every move I made in GOTM7 and hand advantages to those yet to start their games or still in the middle of playing them, who are reading this thread, so I referred to them as diplomatic tricks. I intended to talk about them later.

What happens when I put those cards on the table and turn out not to be a hypocrite? That's not going to look good for you, if you're attacking my credibility on that basis.

If my goal were to troll, that would have made itself evident long ago. I've been around this board for five months now, and my forum history here speaks for itself.

You're actually validating my criticism of Archer99, since there is an implied stipulation of my points in "considering" my argument to be insincere, accusing me of being a black pot. You admit the kettle is black but challenge my right to complain about it. I'm sure Archer99 appreciates your support.


- Sirian