Exploit: Infinite builders as Spain (multiplayer)

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

After it's recent buff, Spain was buffed partially through the ability of getting a free builder whenever a city is founded on a continent different from Spain's capital.

While this is a strong ability, the ability currently does not work as advertised.
Currently, the ability instead gets activated every time the game registers that you as Spain take ownership of a city that is on a different continent.
This can be exploited in multiplayer through the cooperation of two players, by repeatedly trading a city back and forth between to players, thereby telling the game that you have taken ownership of a city.
There is no check on whether or not the city has already benefitted from the "free builder bonus", so every time the city comes into Spanish control again, another free builder gets created.
And since a city can be traded back and forth multiple times on the same turn, this creates a potentially unlimited stream of builders.

This exploit is not directly applicable to single player, as the AI hardly if ever trades their cities, and certainly won't cooperate in trading a city back and forth under normal circumstances.
You can of course let a city loyalty flip back and forth, but this is hardly more efficient than just having another city and building builders, thereby making this a mostly multiplayer exploit.

 

[civac]

Isn't this super obvious?

 

[Linklite]

Isn't this super obvious?

To who? To the player? I assumed that they would have coded it to founding a city rather than gaining one, so it never occurred to me to even try. To the devs? Apparently not.

I'm curious if it works militarily as well. When I played, I believe it didn't give me an extra builder, but it's possible I've gotten confused in the meantime as to which continent was "mine" (I spawned on a continental boundary in the main island).

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

To who? To the player? I assumed that they would have coded it to founding a city rather than gaining one, so it never occurred to me to even try. To the devs? Appreciate not.

I'm curious if it works militarily as well. When I played, I believe it didn't give me an extra builder, but it's possible I've gotten confused in the meantime as to which continent was "mine" (I spawned on a continental boundary in the main island).

Capturing a city also procs the free builder. A nice touch and pretty strong by itself, but fortunately not game breaking.

 

[criZp]

Isn't this super obvious?

No, it really isn't.

 

[Kwami]

What's really annoying about this exploit is that they already fixed the same problem numerous times before with other leaders.

 

[BrotherInJah]

Capturing a city also procs the free builder. A nice touch and pretty strong by itself, but fortunately not game breaking.

Every exploit is game breaking..

 

[AsH2]

Every exploit is game breaking..

That would make all 4X games broken.

 

[Socrates99]

Every exploit is game breaking..

The capturing seems intended, not an exploit.

 

[PiR]

That would make all 4X games broken.

all computer games? yeah, but not necessarily for those who choose not to use them
everyone can be free to play the way they enjoy it

 

[Aristos]

That would make all 4X games broken.

The third X for eXploit does not refer to exploiting bugs in the software.

 

[criZp]

What's really annoying about this exploit is that they already fixed the same problem numerous times before with other leaders.

Pretty sure Alexander's still works on repeated gain of city ownership

 

[AsH2]

The third X for eXploit does not refer to exploiting bugs in the software.

Of course, but it's included in "every exploit" - the initial claim.

 

[Kwami]

Pretty sure Alexander's still works on repeated gain of city ownership

Maybe, but didn't they fix Basil getting his bonus from conquering instead of founding?

 

[UWHabs]

Maybe, but didn't they fix Basil getting his bonus from conquering instead of founding?

Yeah, and they fixed England's repeated units from free cities too.

 

[Naokaukodem]

..

In multiplayer. Another example I experienced lately : it was a 4vs4, one guy of the opposite team "quitted" with apparent no reason. The other team declared war because, eventhough banished, 3 including me from my team picked "random civ" in the hope to fall on Tomyris, (that's not the exploit, it can be countered I believe with the two custom pools of randomized civs, even if i don't know how it works) and it was one of my teammate. The exploit was : one of my teammate declared peace with the AI... so both teams were at peace, when Tomyris lost a city and was challenged. It is game breaker. (and I sure would use it if my opponent was toxic or simply asocial)

 

[BrotherInJah]

Of course, but it's included in "every exploit" - the initial claim.

True, i oversimplified, i meant not intended exploits..

 

[SaboteurINT]

That`s gamebreaking. However, If I were Firaxis, it would be hard to predict this (that is not an irony).I would never got such an idea, so congratulations for those who had found this exploit.

 

[Kwami]

That`s gamebreaking. However, If I were Firaxis, it would be hard to predict this (that is not an irony).I would never got such an idea, so congratulations for those who had found this exploit.

Except, they already fixes the same bug for other leaders, so they should have predicted it.

 

[UWHabs]

That`s gamebreaking. However, If I were Firaxis, it would be hard to predict this (that is not an irony).I would never got such an idea, so congratulations for those who had found this exploit.

Except, they already fixes the same bug for other leaders, so they should have predicted it.

I can see both sides. On the one hand, given the times they've had to fix various "get a free thing when you do X" bugs/exploits, it should have triggered something. But sometimes things happen very differently in multiplayer that it's easy to forget. Like, for example, I saw this in my last game as Spain, where I captured a city (free builder), liberated it though, and then when I captured it again, I got another free one. I could easily see that even if they had noticed that, they may have said, "whatever, it's a builder, not really a big deal if you can trigger it a couple times like that" figuring that this was a niche corner case, and not something that could be exploited in another specific setup (multiplayer).