A new 'hack' (for want of a better word) has been discovered which allows very fast culture victories in BtS to be obtained almost entirely using espionage. It appears from a couple of games in which people have tried the hack that it enables cultural victories far faster than can be achieved by conventional means, and would therefore, if permitted in GOTMs, very likely render traditional cultural victories obsolete. Because of this, both GOTM and HOF teams are separately considering whether the espionage trick should be permitted. This thread has been opened to solicit opinions from GOTM participants regarding what we should do for GOTMs.
The Trick:
Roughly: You build an army of maybe 50 or 60 spies. You found a city, seed it with some culture (for example from a single great work), station all the spies in it, and gift it to an AI. The next turn, you have all the spies perform the spread culture mission, which means the city now has sufficient culture to be legendary if it was yours. So the very next turn, you declare war and take the city back. Do this with 3 cities and you have a culture victory – with a date much earlier than could be achieved by building culture in the traditional way.
There's no doubt that it's an imaginative idea, and the people who thought it up and have successfully used it are to be congratulated on their ingenuity. However, going forward, we (the GOTM staff) are worried that this 'hack' will damage the spirit of GOTMs by destroying traditional cultural victories, and it's not clear to what extent it represents legitimate playing vs an exploit. The question is therefore: What should we do about it? There are broadly four options:
The Options:
Do Nothing:
If we do nothing, then people will in principle be free to play GOTMs however they wish, including using the espionage trick. However, in practice, it's likely that traditional culture victories will die out. People who want to win by culture in BtS will be forced to exclusively play the espionage trick in order to secure competitive victory dates.
Ban the Espionage Trick:
Doing this will preserve traditional culture victories. But obviously, it prevents you from playing what some people feel is a legitimate strategy.
Create a Separate Espionage Victory Condition:
This would mean that the espionage exploit would be permitted, but anyone who wins by using it would be considered to have won an espionage victory, not a cultural victory. Obviously this gives maximum flexibility to players while at the same time ensuring that traditional cultural victories can continue to win awards. However, it's not yet clear that sufficient GOTM players would want to play this VC to make an award viable. There's also a danger of creating too many awards, in the process devaluing existing awards.
Nerf or Remove the Espionage trick by Modding
This could have a similar effect to banning it, but without any requirement to police it. One idea would be to mod a rule that culture generated from the spread culture mission never contributes to the calculation of a city's legendary status for the purposes of a culture victory (but it retains all other effects). Another idea would be a mod that limits the number of spread culture missions that can be carried out in a city. I suspect that the community may come up with other ideas. However, these are obviously dependant on what work, if any, can be done on the BUFFY mod.
Other Considerations
Banning the espionage exploit, or creating a separate victory condition both raise the question of how would we detect it? At present that's problematic, though we are looking into possible solutions. It's possible that a new version of BUFFY may be written to accommodate this, although that's not certain because of the considerable work involved. There's also the awkward question of precisely what event should trigger banning/swapping the VC to espionage. For example a player may carry out a single spread culture mission in an AI city for other purposes, and later on capture that city and decide to make it a legendary city - clearly we don't want to penalize that.
On the other hand doing nothing is likely to cause the death of traditional cultural victories - which would be quite sad. There's also a point of view that it feels wrong that the best way to achieve a cultural victory should involve not building any cultural buildings nor making any significant attempt to generate culture in the normal way, and that therefore using spies to generate almost all culture should be seen as an exploit rather than as a legitimate strategy.
Making a Decision
We've started this thread to let the GOTM community contribute any thoughts, ideas or opinions to inform our decision. In the end though, the GOTM staff do have to run the competition, and that means we will have to make a firm decision on how to proceed. The decision will be based on feedback here, on what is technologically feasible, and on what seems likely to us to maximize continuing enjoyment of GOTMs for the highest number of people. But there are conflicting interests here and it's likely to be all but impossible to make a decision that doesn't upset some people. I hope the community will respect that.
That's the situation. Please contribute any thoughts you have. (But please remember not to divulge any information from GOTM games that are still in process!)
The Trick:
Roughly: You build an army of maybe 50 or 60 spies. You found a city, seed it with some culture (for example from a single great work), station all the spies in it, and gift it to an AI. The next turn, you have all the spies perform the spread culture mission, which means the city now has sufficient culture to be legendary if it was yours. So the very next turn, you declare war and take the city back. Do this with 3 cities and you have a culture victory – with a date much earlier than could be achieved by building culture in the traditional way.
There's no doubt that it's an imaginative idea, and the people who thought it up and have successfully used it are to be congratulated on their ingenuity. However, going forward, we (the GOTM staff) are worried that this 'hack' will damage the spirit of GOTMs by destroying traditional cultural victories, and it's not clear to what extent it represents legitimate playing vs an exploit. The question is therefore: What should we do about it? There are broadly four options:
The Options:
Do Nothing:
If we do nothing, then people will in principle be free to play GOTMs however they wish, including using the espionage trick. However, in practice, it's likely that traditional culture victories will die out. People who want to win by culture in BtS will be forced to exclusively play the espionage trick in order to secure competitive victory dates.
Ban the Espionage Trick:
Doing this will preserve traditional culture victories. But obviously, it prevents you from playing what some people feel is a legitimate strategy.
Create a Separate Espionage Victory Condition:
This would mean that the espionage exploit would be permitted, but anyone who wins by using it would be considered to have won an espionage victory, not a cultural victory. Obviously this gives maximum flexibility to players while at the same time ensuring that traditional cultural victories can continue to win awards. However, it's not yet clear that sufficient GOTM players would want to play this VC to make an award viable. There's also a danger of creating too many awards, in the process devaluing existing awards.
Nerf or Remove the Espionage trick by Modding
This could have a similar effect to banning it, but without any requirement to police it. One idea would be to mod a rule that culture generated from the spread culture mission never contributes to the calculation of a city's legendary status for the purposes of a culture victory (but it retains all other effects). Another idea would be a mod that limits the number of spread culture missions that can be carried out in a city. I suspect that the community may come up with other ideas. However, these are obviously dependant on what work, if any, can be done on the BUFFY mod.
Other Considerations
Banning the espionage exploit, or creating a separate victory condition both raise the question of how would we detect it? At present that's problematic, though we are looking into possible solutions. It's possible that a new version of BUFFY may be written to accommodate this, although that's not certain because of the considerable work involved. There's also the awkward question of precisely what event should trigger banning/swapping the VC to espionage. For example a player may carry out a single spread culture mission in an AI city for other purposes, and later on capture that city and decide to make it a legendary city - clearly we don't want to penalize that.
On the other hand doing nothing is likely to cause the death of traditional cultural victories - which would be quite sad. There's also a point of view that it feels wrong that the best way to achieve a cultural victory should involve not building any cultural buildings nor making any significant attempt to generate culture in the normal way, and that therefore using spies to generate almost all culture should be seen as an exploit rather than as a legitimate strategy.
Making a Decision
We've started this thread to let the GOTM community contribute any thoughts, ideas or opinions to inform our decision. In the end though, the GOTM staff do have to run the competition, and that means we will have to make a firm decision on how to proceed. The decision will be based on feedback here, on what is technologically feasible, and on what seems likely to us to maximize continuing enjoyment of GOTMs for the highest number of people. But there are conflicting interests here and it's likely to be all but impossible to make a decision that doesn't upset some people. I hope the community will respect that.
That's the situation. Please contribute any thoughts you have. (But please remember not to divulge any information from GOTM games that are still in process!)
at that last one. Seriously?
replacing 
as one of the victory condition drivers (this tactic is useless outside of culture victories)?
.
. It's not a freebie VC at all, it's just more efficient than "traditional" culture and then only because you can't focus traditional culture like you can espionage.
.
