Banned Tactics:
* Selling/giving away cities at any time
.....
This shouldn't be the case, sure selling/giving/trading cities for the culture exploit should not be allowed. But what if thats not what your doing, what if your selling/trading a Puppet city, that would have no effect on policy cost.
There is a quick fix to remove the selling cities exploit to lower Policy cost, which is,
It would also remove other "tactics" or "exploits" depending on how you look at them, of saving culture until after either 1. Redentor, or 2. That -25% Future Social Policies Social Policy on Freedom.
Fix : When the cost of a policy drops, all unspent culture drops by the same percentage.
I.e A 25% Social Policy Cost Drop, will reduce unspent culture by the same amount, if you have 1,000 in saved culture, this is reduced to 750.
This should be either 1. Put into a Mod designed to balance the game removing exploits and what not, or 2. Passed onto the Dev's who will update it into the game.
The Fix will remove the additional bonus you get for not spending early (more policies for your culture - the exploit), however, it
does not make the Policy/Wonder irrelevant, they still work, but probably more so as inttended, to lower all
future policy costs. I.e all Current/Previous(Unspent) culture is not allowed to be spent at the new cheaper rate, but all
future culture earnt does get the benefit.
Alas, till such a fix is implemented, the Rendentor Exploit as it shall be known from now on, and all others like it, (which lower the policy cost for culture saved up), will be the easiest way to win. But its not impossible to win otherwise, I finished the Culture victory, spending each culture policy as I earnt it, and never even built the Rendentor, (I had finished the game by the time my science reached it, as science wasn't my goal.
If their should be a rule to use to stop the Redentor Exploit. It should not be to stop from selling cities, as this doesn't fix the other two versions of the exploit.
It should be,
Guidelines -
- Where possible, adopt a Cultural Policy into a desired branch as soon as your able.
- Tactics to save Culture for a different tree not yet available is allowed, however, Culture must be spent on policies before doing any of the following, 1.
Selling Non-Puppet Cities, 2.
Building the World Wonder the Redentor, 3.
Taking the Freedom Solical Policy "Free Speech".
All of which are exploits as described below, not just the first one;
The threshold for something being an exploit rather than a stragey is when it relies on a design flaw that provides such a significant advantage that everyone would have to use it to be competative. A design flaw in the sense of how the designers meant the game to be played.
My proposed tempory Guideline solution, will solve all three Exploits without impeeding on allowed strategies, such as saving for a different policy tree or selling cities for other purposes, perhaps to stop warmonger happy civ's from crushing your little utopia.
Well it will solve the problem, so long as everyone is honhest and abides it.
So thats 1 Exploit found, debated, and a fix has just been proposed. Lets find some more
.
Saved them late for golden ages, but then I finished Utopia faster than expected.
I did keep extra saves to prove this though if need be, so I have one from 191 and 300.
)