Civ V - Beta 3

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Originally Posted by Rokklagið View Post
What about playing this game with Babylon and their +100% GS generation?

I suppose it could be ridiculous, probably getting under t100 wins...

Which is why Babylon was forbidden as a player Civ.

No, that's your rationale for forbidding Babylon in this Gauntlet:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=9866956&postcount=11

The real reason is not everyone will have DLC and that would not be fair to players who lack the DLC. (The DLC Babylon Civ wasn't even specifically mentioned.)

Here is the exact expression of the reason for the forbidding of DLC in this Gauntlet:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=9866858&postcount=9

Personally, I don't want Babylon permitted because no one missing the Babylon Civ would be able to load any of the Games submitted that contained the Babylon Civ, either as the Player Civ or as an Opponent Civ.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Xicivilian]

I have a question about Siam.

The UA description says "Food and culture from friendly city states increased 50%"

Does the "friendly" word refer to friend or allied status? Because I didn't notice any difference between friendly, nautral, irrational or hostile personalities.

It is not about the personality, but about if you are friends or allies with them. So Neutral or Angry or at War you don't get the Food and Culture bonus, and Friends or Ally you get it

 

[Ozbenno]

Well, they've done a major U-turn now because this new patch will prevent players from saving SPs. They must be cashed out immediately from now on.

The developers considered it an exploit to save culture.

Interesting, might have to revisit the culture win to see how to do it without saving SPs.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Clearly the game designers knew that saving Culture was allowed and later in the Game there are many ways to reduce the costs of Social Policies, otherwise they would not have designed the Culture payment system for Social Policies in the way they did.

Well, they've done a major U-turn now because this new patch will prevent players from saving SPs. They must be cashed out immediately from now on.

The developers considered it an exploit to save culture.

The Game Designers specifically design a Social Policy system where Social Policies purchases can be delayed, and now they consider that an exploit and force immediate purchase of Social Policies!?

It is absolutely inexcusable for the Game Designers to not see this obvious strategy of saving up Culture and waiting until Social Policies cost much less until purchasing them. To consider this an exploit is laughable when this part of the Culture/Social Policy system was specifically designed to do this.

Rather than disable this nice feature of delaying Social Policy purchases, all they had to do is keep track of each Social Policy's cost when it first became available in a queue of Social Policy costs. Simply push the (immediate) Social Policy current cost unto the Queue when it becomes available and simply pull the saved Social Policy cost from the Queue when the Player wants to actually purchase it. This will allow the deferment of Social Policies "without discounting their cost" (the real exploit) until the Technology that unlocks them has been researched.

I find it extremely disappointing that the Game Developers couldn't see this elegant queue solution to the real exploit. Took me a few seconds to think of it and I'm certainly not a Game Developer by any stretch of the imagination.

I'm quite certain than this trend of fixing "exploits" by completely disabling specifically designed functionality will continue. For Profit Companies that use Closed Source Code often prefer the simple quick fix, even if it means disabling (destroying) the previously developed functionality. I see virtually no chance of the Game Designers ever fixing this exploit properly (via the queue mechanism I mentioned above).

Perhaps, we should be grateful that the Game Designers identified this exploit at all and provided a least a "Sledge Hammer" fix for it. (I offered both it and a queue-like method for fixing this exploit in a previous thread, perhaps the Beta 1 thread.)

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[DJMGator13]

Just finished a 1690AD (T163) game. I could not fully take advantage of the "Sell Everything Twice" as Rome would not make peace after the first deal and stayed at war for more than 2/3rds of the game. The only thing that saved this game was the gifted specialists: I received 3 GS and a GE. So when it was time for the final techs I had 7 GS, Oxford sitting at 1 turn and the GE in my best production city. By the end of the game I was selling gpt for lump sum gold in order to make the final of the 8 CS my allies. I secured the last one the turn before the vote.

This is the first time I have completed a game on Emporer or a Diplomatic victory. If I get enough time to try again, I should be able to knock 20-30 turns off this date but my early game mechanics aren't anywhere close to what the top couple dates have produced. Those are some very good games.

EDIT: One thing I noticed in my last few attempts: is that when I become "friends" or "allies" with a CS I only received the food bonus for Siam. I thought in some or my earlier attempts I was receiving both a food and culture bonus. Did this change?

 

[boehj]

I agree with what you say Sun Tzu Wu. But with two absurd scenarios confronting me, I have no choice but to run with the most current, that is, the devs see it as an exploit.

Let's put it this way: Why did they ban it if they didn't see it as an exploit?

 

[boehj]

I'm not defending their shoddy work here.

 

[NoImagination]

I wish I hadn't found this forum. First I lost my Sunday doing the 4th challenge, now I'm going to lose my spare weekday evenings on this one.

 

[Harvie]

Very easy with China. Not sure if they are the best choice but it is too easy to dominate your neighbours with their generals, especially on this map.
The diplo victory is really just an alternative science victory. I had enough votes from very early on so it was a race to globalisation.
Fun game though.
Now to spank some civs in HOF B4!

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

I agree with what you say Sun Tzu Wu. But with two absurd scenarios confronting me, I have no choice but to run with the most current, that is, the devs see it as an exploit.

Let's put it this way: Why did they ban it if they didn't see it as an exploit?

I agree with you that the Game Designers have resolved what they consider an exploit.

They resolved the exploit by disabling the entire feature (deferring Social Policy purchases) rather than spending a few minutes to fix just the exploit itself (getting Social Policy discounts on Culture earned when the discount was not available).

To use an analogy, its like fixing a leaky faucet by turning off the shut-off value and doing nothing further. All they had to do was fix the leak.

Allow me to repeat: They did not simply fix an exploit within the feature, they disabled the entire feature!

You can no longer defer Culture for purchasing Social Policies later, presumably when you have learned the unlocking Technologies to future Social Policy trees. This was a great feature; its just too bad they destroyed the entire feature by disabling it.

This is a real shame, because buying social policies now for deferred use later is even easier to do than using a queue as mentioned in my previous post. All they had to do is keep a simple count of prepaid and unused Social Policies. The cost of the Social Policy is determined as usual when the Culture is earned with current discounts applied and is deducted from the Culture total and the count of unused Social Policies is incremented. The free Social Policies in the Game can also be transferred to this count immediately with no change to the Culture total.

So, a simple count of unused Social Policies could have been implemented rather than disabling the entire feature. Only one variable needs to be added and there is just one routine (a second routine for the free Social Policies in the Game) where the count needs to be incremented and another routine where it needs to be decremented. Probably less than six lines of code added or modified. Even, better, they may already have this count, but use it only for the free Social Policies in the Game. Maybe, they will add/modify this simple count later, but I doubt they will ever revisit this exploit and fix it properly.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[tommynt]

I dont think that saving sp was an "exploit" by any means, not even when u did do stuff to make them cheaper afterwards. when saving sp u get:
- benefit of getting them maybe cheaper later
- loss of the bonuss for the time u wait

that should pretty much even out (well when going for cult win it maybe doesnt ...)

having to spend a sp to some crap just cause i m not in some age but no being able to to take it when i got the tech (cause of quadratic costs..) is just dumb design.

 

[Kamino]

I dont think that saving sp was an "exploit" by any means, not even when u did do stuff to make them cheaper afterwards. when saving sp u get:
- benefit of getting them maybe cheaper later
- loss of the bonuss for the time u wait

Gameplay is about choices and it is a very interesting choice. It should be. Maybe the problem is just SP are very unbalanced (3 first trees are crappy).

 

[tommynt]

actually 2nd is strongest overall and military path is in fact totaly op when really being in war - free general - double flanking bonus and instantheal after every battle = u cantnot loose any battle

anyway your post makes no sense - gameplay is about choises? if i have to spend my sp i have np choise ..

 

[KingMorgan]

I'm working on the theory that firaxis have no devleopers / playtesters that actually play the game at a high enough level at length. I also subscribe to the theory that the manager in charge at firaxis browses CFC and other civ websites and allocates his developers to 'patch' whatever issues the 'masses' shout about loudest, sadly mr Manger has not yet found this forum or S&T and has no real grasp of the problems. I suspect this manager is not a gamer/dev or even a code jockey, he just manages people and their tasking.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

I dont think that saving sp was an "exploit" by any means, not even when u did do stuff to make them cheaper afterwards. when saving sp u get:
- benefit of getting them maybe cheaper later
- loss of the bonuss for the time u wait

that should pretty much even out (well when going for cult win it maybe doesnt ...)

having to spend a sp to some crap just cause i m not in some age but no being able to to take it when i got the tech (cause of quadratic costs..) is just dumb design.

I agree with you that there isn't an exploit; I simply called it an exploit because many Players consider it as such and the Civ V developers have patched the feature out of existence.

I'm perfectly fine with how one can save Culture, get future discounts on purchasing Social Policies, even for Cultural Games. The Game should be Played as Designed; Not patched to disable nice features like this one. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the Strategy of Saving Culture until Social Policies can be Purchased at a discount. There's nothing wrong with that. It's really no different than using the tactic of using a nearby Great General to improve combat odds in a Domination Victory (or any Victory Condition where combat is utilized).

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[boehj]

I hope people aren't putting me in the wrong category here. I *liked* saving SPs, the two exceptions being when I'd do a straight ICS or go on an Honor rampage. I definitely liked having the choice and it seemed fair enough to delay taking an SP because there was a great big button on the screen inviting me to do so.

But...

They've changed their minds. They changed their minds because they thought it was an exploit, too OP, too much fun... whatever.

It often happens that plans change. When they do, some will like the new state of affairs, some won't. One example that immediately springs to mind is the use of full-body floating plastic swimsuits in Olympic swimming. For a period they were fine to use because there was no law preventing their use. Swimmers used them and smashed World Records by crazy margins. Now we have a situation where those records will likely never be broken again because these suits have now been banned. They were seen as an exploit.

Rules are dynamic. It's pretty easy to understand.

 

[Igmod]

Tried Kamino's tips which helped a lot but didn't come close to his score

 

[kmtravis]

Thought I was doing well, but this is nowhere close to the other victories, 1952 AD.

 

[Neuro]

I agree with you that there isn't an exploit; I simply called it an exploit because many Players consider it as such and the Civ V developers have patched the feature out of existence.

I'm perfectly fine with how one can save Culture, get future discounts on purchasing Social Policies, even for Cultural Games. The Game should be Played as Designed; Not patched to disable nice features like this one. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the Strategy of Saving Culture until Social Policies can be Purchased at a discount. There's nothing wrong with that. It's really no different than using the tactic of using a nearby Great General to improve combat odds in a Domination Victory (or any Victory Condition where combat is utilized).

Sun Tzu Wu

Sadly, I feel the SP change was designed to combat the selling off of cities technique, rather than thinking saving up culture was an exploit. A rather lazy way to fix it if you ask me.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Sadly, I feel the SP change was designed to combat the selling off of cities technique, rather than thinking saving up culture was an exploit. A rather lazy way to fix it if you ask me.

Agree 100% with Neuro's statement above.

Sun Tzu Wu