Does Anyone Ban Exploits

[Minou]

I used to play and post in the Civ IV GOTM competition. As I recall, there used to be a Hall of Fame mod for Civ IV that prevented some exploits as well as logged restarts. I played Civ IV for years, and really enjoyed Civ VI at first, but as I have personally improved the game has gotten much less interesting because there are too many game-breaking exploits. Chop overflow felt kind of gimmicky, but to me it never ruined the game as it at least required some skill planning the timing of policies. However, the new pillage scaling completely ruins the game for me - I haven't finished a game since that change.

So my question is, do players currently ban any exploits for serious games / records? Some things that I wondered about:

1. Pillaging currently seems so broken that it is laughable. I can't believe pillage scaling was added to the game without anyone realizing how terrible it was. I guess it is possible to intentionally never pillage, but that is not ideal. I always enjoyed the small boost in the early game, especially pillaging a Holy Site for a Pantheon if I have no other source of faith.

2. Goddess of the Harvest always felt grossly overpowered and it seems way worse now with Monumentality. I wish it just gave the base cost of a chop in faith (i.e. always 20f throughout the game instead of scaling). That would make it a still strong Pantheon, but not the best choice in 99.9% of games. It kind of ruins games for me because the random act of getting Harvest or not ends up being more important to victory time than almost everything else including early city states, neighboring Civs, starting resources, etc.

3. Neighborhood gold seems broken as currently implemented. If you had to actually finish the Neighborhood to get the gold, this policy would make perfect sense but just placing them everywhere for thousands of gold feels like a bug to me. I was usually too lazy with planning o make get truly obscene amounts in the vanilla version, but now that the card gives 100g instead of 50g it feels like its gone too far.

4. Trading a resource for lump sum gold and declaring seems broken to me as well. It does not seem balanced to trade a resource for 200 lump gold, declare, and sell it again the next turn. If the game made you wait 30 turns to get the resource back, that would be fine. In my games I never trade for lump gold if I plan to attack in the next 30 turns, though I am perfectly happy to trade for gold per turn and then declare at any point. I think Victoria has commented about playing this way.

Interested to hear if there are generally accepted restrictions on any of these in competitive play, and whether people feel there is any hope any of these will be fixed by a future patch.

 

[Onii-chan]

I don't play competitively but yes I certainly avoid stupid exploits when playing alone at least. Just takes the fun out of the game. I wish I could turn off other broken mechanics like production overflow as well but it's difficult to avoid

I know banning stuff is pretty normal in stable groups of competitive players though so I wouldn't be surprised if those things have been gotten rid off there down as well

 

[Infixo]

I would like Firaxis to fix those, so we won’t have to worry about banning them.

 

[Bradypus]

I think it's the general sentiment in MP that players want to disallow exploits and OP mechanics but also recognize that it's difficult to police. I think I can play with friends and be able to trust that no one exploits or abuses OP mechanics.

I would like Firaxis to fix those, so we won’t have to worry about banning them.

Ultimately I agree with Infixo that devs should prevent exploits. Some changes can be implemented easily.

 

[orasis]

Neighborhoods make spy missions more likely to succeed.... so ... you're going to get gold but your enemies 'recruit partisans' is much more likely to succeed if you have even one of them.

 

[Victoria]

So my question is, do players currently ban any exploits for serious games / records? Some things that I wondered about:

GOTM is more about having fun and sharing maps in my view but there are all types that play it.
There is no way to control what people do with a save and so you cannot call the GOTM competitive in any real sense. It does have some rules.
1. Set your number of saves to 1, for the current turn issue reload.
2. The highest ethical rule is do not replay any turn. - unenforceable.
3. The gold you can get from selling great works on the first turn is busted so that is currently banned.

Other things like public transport could be banned but are not... and why did they double its gold in a patch. So to seems acceptable but highly abusable. I play by my own rules anyway... I hate lump sum deals just before declaring war. That is just clear exploit.
Even pillaging is not banned currently. GOTM or any other place is no measure of who is best from a blind map just like multi player is a judge of who is best at the game.

People should stop putting yardsticks up to other people and instead just measure themselves. The world would be a better place.

If you do want to find out if you are any good at the game try a GOTM.... there are some fast players on there. It is a great forum for learning more.

 

[Janskey]

I would like Firaxis to fix those, so we won’t have to worry about banning them.

That would be best. Sometimes it's easy just not to use an exploit, but how am I supposed to know e.g. what's likely to be a fair deal when selling my resources?

GOTM is more about having fun and sharing maps in my view but there are all types that play it.

People should stop putting yardsticks up to other people and instead just measure themselves. The world would be a better place.

Yes, there's a lot that can go wrong with metrics:

When their scores are used as a basis of reward and punishment, surgeons, as do others under such scrutiny, engage in creaming, that is, they avoid the riskier cases. When hospitals are penalized based on the percentage of patients who fail to survive for thirty days beyond surgery, patients are sometimes kept alive for thirty-one days, so that their mortality is not reflected in the hospital’s metrics. In England, in an attempt to reduce wait times in emergency wards, the Department of Health adopted a policy that penalized hospitals with wait times longer than four hours. The program succeeded—at least on the surface. In fact, some hospitals responded by keeping incoming patients in queues of ambulances, beyond the doors of the hospital, until the staff was confident that the patient could be seen within the allotted four hours of being admitted.

 

[Minou]

Thanks for the feedback. Victoria, I wanted to say I have enjoyed your posts for many months. IN fact, about half of what I know about the game mechanics comes from your work. They should have hired you to write the Civilpedia!

My case in point is a game I just started. My Settler spawned in a kind of crappy tundra spot, but my Warrior found Pantanal and a hut on T1. The hut had a Scout, and thanks to the map shape I met 6 city states in the first 20 turns, getting a free envoy at 5 of them. One was Jerusalem which gave me a Pantheon at T28 - and somehow Goddess of the Harvest was still available!

Meeting all those city states and having a wonder to settler next to will make it very easy to get a Classical Golden Age, and could just take Goddess of the Harvest and start an endless cycle of chopping out Settlers for Faith and buying Builders once the Classical Era starts.

At this point I actually saved and quit, because I don't want to play out the best start I have ever rolled with the broken mechanics in effect and waste my chance to break my personal record for SV. Is there any chance pillaging will be fixed? Fireaxis finally fixed overflow and Magus after months (years?), so maybe? I suppose since Goddess has been broken for two years they don't care and I should just enjoy it. But I would hate to play out this great start with broken pillaging and then have it patched midway through and miss my chance for my personal record.

It seems weird to me that they make dozens of tiny changes that make no real difference every patch but let game-breaking stuff remain indefinitely. I have given up waiting for the AI to present any challenge but at least playing again your own personal best time can partly make up for that if the truly ridiculous things were fixed.

 

[iammaxhailme]

I only play by myself but persosnally I refuse to do chop overflows or placing districts to fix their cost and building them 100 turns later. I consider both of these things to be neither fun nor intended

 

[Ondolindë]

This is exactly what the main issue is for me and it really erodes, over time, the fun experience and the great things GS has. Firaxis should ban exploits it has direct control over. And people should know better too, but that’s another issue.

I frankly don’t understand how Firaxis can release a major expansion with glaring issues like this and other bugs. I’m slowly experiencing what others have as I am taking my time playing this expansion. Recently, I couldn’t believe how pillaging a campus would give me +2000 science (exploit), for example, or not seeing barbarians for hundreds of turns (bug or map generation balance issue).

First, if they do it knowingly, why? Second, if they are truly oblivious, shouldn’t they have a release protocol that makes it necessary to truly test the game beforehand? For a while now I am starting to agree with others in their frustration here that Firaxis has very myopic playing and testing behavior. Unfortunately, I doubt their testing practices which seem bound to a very narrow playing style. I’m sorry, but I don’t find any other reason that explains it. Also, they say they are in touch with the fan base and read forums like this one, but maybe not thoroughly, because there are issues that really invested people here have been writing about and in depth for a long time which no one responds to which is bad manners really.

Do people actually play the game over there? I shouldn’t have to ask this question. But I ask because they truly seem just unaware. And this is aggravated by what other poster in another thread here said recently, but it is not new by any means, and seems very logical to me: we get weekly communication from them when they’re trying to sell the game, and radio silence after it. The exception is the few instances I have seen where Firaxis and 2K employees do respond with more than a standard answer to bugs being reported on the Bug Reporting thread here, but that’s not enough. Firaxis’ organizational culture is funny that way. What are they trying to control and protect by their marked silence? This would be an interesting case for analysis in my Organizational Behavior class my students can shed light to and help me understand.

 

[Victoria]

It seems weird to me that they make dozens of tiny changes that make no real difference every patch but let game-breaking stuff remain indefinitely

The game breaking stuff we can choose to ignore... it is hard sometimes. I suspect they like and keep some of it. I am as guilty as anyone of getting harvest and racing away with it.

own personal best time can partly make up for that

Yes partly but it is something. I have sort of moved past that admitting it is map based as you have discovered. Now I play every game to understand the real challenges in it. Like getting the start right based on the terrain, it feels good when things click into place.

Enemies in rough terrain can be a real issue while enemies in smooth mean for a fast game. Getting that scout out, making sure your city is partly safe from barbs then finding an enemy (and potential iron deposit land) is so valuable.
Glad I have helped, tx for the feedback, everyone here is helpful though, it is a great forum. One tip is to use an @ in front of someone’s name or they can miss such posts... tx again @Minou

to do chop overflows

Chop overflows are no more, chop away, one gets no value from the card flow over and in some cases due to bad design the card acts with a lot less power.

 

[Socrates99]

Ban as in MP games? Most people do try to lay out rules on exploits. In SP I just consciously dont use them. I know for some people its irritating just knowing they're there but it doesn't bug me.

 

[Bradypus]

I frankly don’t understand how Firaxis can release a major expansion with glaring issues like this and other bugs. I’m slowly experiencing what others have as I am taking my time playing this expansion. Recently, I couldn’t believe how pillaging a campus would give me +2000 science (exploit), for example, or not seeing barbarians for hundreds of turns (bug or map generation balance issue).

I had a breeze in a deity game as Mali last week. I ended up on a continent with literally all the city states in the game and no other civs! Then all other civs ended up on another continent for themselves!

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Banning exploits requires self-consistently defining "exploits". Usually that step is failed.

It's unfortunate when a large number of things skew the game such that playing at all results in at least some false choices/busted interactions.

 

[Minou]

I think my plan in going to be to sit on this save and hope the next patch fixes pillaging. If it dies I will load up, enjoy my Harvest good fortune, and pillage Scotland’s mines a good honest 25 science each. I can avoid trade/declare on my own but I don’t like having to choose between broken pillage and no pillaging at all.

 

[Bradypus]

I think my plan in going to be to sit on this save and hope the next patch fixes pillaging. If it dies I will load up, enjoy my Harvest good fortune, and pillage Scotland’s mines a good honest 25 science each. I can avoid trade/declare on my own but I don’t like having to choose between broken pillage and no pillaging at all.

I know what you mean. Sometimes I am in the situation where I would pillage a tile regardless of yields (I want to destroy a campus for example). Then if the AI rebuilds it shortly after and the opportunity presents itself to pillage it again, I'll feel guilty pillaging it. Basically the extent I avoid pillaging in Civ 6 is to not run policy modifiers for pillaging and not focus on pillaging for the sake of the yields. But I think it's a shame to have any sense of guilt pillaging a tile you would pillage even if pillaging was balanced.

 

[Stilgar08]

I only play by myself but persosnally I refuse to do chop overflows or placing districts to fix their cost and building them 100 turns later. I consider both of these things to be neither fun nor intended

Same here. I won't buy out great works of my biggest culture opponents as well and don't take 1g for a deal, I always ask for what it takes and don't do lump sum/declare BS. I agree it's quite a lot but some stuff has been adressed (chop overflows for instance).
There's a lot that could and should be done via patching but it's up to the player what to exploit and what not. So I don't understand the anger. What I do understand is discontend and pillaging is crazy, though. Granted!

 

[Minou]

I would not say anger, but maybe disappointment. It would be fun for me to play out this game and see if I could get a victory date remotely near what some legendary players post the Stratgey forum or in GOTM. But to try would require abusing pillage, trade, neighborhoods (maybe, I’m not an expert and maybe pros skip this), etc. So one must choose between a game that feels cheesy and no hope of a competitive date. If some of these get fixed you could have the best of both worlds playing a game that feels “real” while putting yourself against the best of the best.

Hell, maybe they will even balance production one day so building mines will be better than chopping but that’s wishful thinking.