G-Major 116

[LowtherCastle]

*snip*

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

The "No Espionage" option is illegal for HoF games, so this proposed solution will not work for the HoF:

http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ4/rules.php

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[LowtherCastle]

There are only two things carved in stone: Mount Rushmore and my wife's Friday morning hair appointment.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

There are only two things carved in stone: Mount Rushmore and my wife's Friday morning hair appointment.

Actually I tried to re-open rules discussion for settings like no tech trades and balanced resources in the past and met some rather surprising resistance despite the lack of evidence against these settings (and a strong case *for* balanced resources).

Apparently it's not so easy to change rules.

However in this case in particular "no espionage" wouldn't solve the issue, because gets directly converted into and spy GPP becomes generic IIRC (IE would allow artist points w/ a spy effectively). There is virtually no chance that such a game would play identically to a culture game with espionage enabled, regardless of the approach one took with it enabled. IMO doing that would only add yet ANOTHER confounding difficulty factor in making games comparable.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

+1 ^^^

The 'No Espionage' option might be fun to play (direct conversion of espionage to culture), but sadly not valid for HoF.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[jesusin]

Very interesting tactic and very interesting discussion!

My opinion about this exploit/tactic in a competitive environement, here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=12572008&postcount=93

 

[Tall German Joe]

Actually I tried to re-open rules discussion for settings like no tech trades and balanced resources in the past and met some rather surprising resistance despite the lack of evidence against these settings (and a strong case *for* balanced resources).

Apparently it's not so easy to change rules.

However in this case in particular "no espionage" wouldn't solve the issue, because gets directly converted into and spy GPP becomes generic IIRC (IE would allow artist points w/ a spy effectively). There is virtually no chance that such a game would play identically to a culture game with espionage enabled, regardless of the approach one took with it enabled. IMO doing that would only add yet ANOTHER confounding difficulty factor in making games comparable.

since you guys are playing with a mod anyways, you could always patch the "No Espionage" setting to actually work, i.e. not convert espionage to culture. (there are no spy specialists, spy GPP, no espionage slider, and no EP points from buildings) as far as I understand it, its a pretty trivial fix; a friend of mine from another forum made a personal mod to do just this, and the whole thing took him just a few hours of coding despite having no experience whatsoever with modding civ4 before.

you can find it here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=486538

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

since you guys are playing with a mod anyways, you could always patch the "No Espionage" setting to actually work, i.e. not convert espionage to culture. (there are no spy specialists, spy GPP, no espionage slider, and no EP points from buildings) as far as I understand it, its a pretty trivial fix; a friend of mine from another forum made a personal mod to do just this, and the whole thing took him just a few hours of coding despite having no experience whatsoever with modding civ4 before.

you can find it here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=486538

I personally have absolutely no interest in playing such a neutered BtS game. I want to play with the Espionage System, The Apostolic Palace and Airships intact.

There is the larger question of game balance and ensuring the game hasn't been modified (No Modified Assets); The thread referenced arbitrarily modifies the game to the personal whims of the poster. I'd prefer to play Civ IV Warlords to that particular mod. Removing Airships is crazy! Sounds like the poster of the referenced thread just removed things from the game he did not like without regard to game balance issues.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[WastinTime]

I don't think Tall German Joe was suggesting we use that mod. Just that we learn from it or take code from it to help get whatever we want.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

I don't think Tall German Joe was suggesting we use that mod. Just that we learn from it or take code from it to help get whatever we want.

The mod refered to makes it possible to optionally entirely remove the espionage system, The Apostolic Palace and/or Air Ships from BtS. Why would we want to do that? With possible exception of Air Ships, these are game elements that make BtS a huge improvement over Warlords. Selecting these options would make BtS play more like Warlords. I don't see any reason for doing that and code that does it has no value to players who want the play with the espionage system, The Apostolic Palace and Air ships.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Air ships don't have the extreme impact of the other two, but I've seen deity players make good use of them and win considerably earlier as a result (ABigCivFan was the first I saw to use massed cavalry + airships + spies vs rifles on deity, the thread would probably come up if you used his name pluse those as search terms). They're also amazing scouting, nigh-unmatched in that regard until other air units with longer range show up (many many turns) and one of only a few units that can detect subs (IE screen for AI tac nukes). While not as big of a deal as espionage or a victory condition, they're still an important addition to BTS and removing them makes no more sense than does corporations...same goes for espionage.

Corporations have allowed some early wins/exceptionally high scores that wouldn't have been possible without them, this is not unlike culture through espionage. CtE as an "exploit" compared to corporations ---> score or TAP ---> diplo is truly a matter of perspective bias. All three of these things are BTS features that make it possible to beat previous best practices...but the way one of them is called seems to rub players the wrong way (and yet somehow RLDV doesn't lol).

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Clearly, Sid's Sushi practically allows Score game to approach being 5-10x larger in score than games without Corporation use. It is clear that Sid's Sushi is so overpowered for Score that everyone would have to use it and maps that favour it to even viably compete. Espionage assisted Cultural Victory clearly doesn't improve Cultural Victory dates over Trafitional Cultural Victory dates by anything close to the Score margin.

Sid's Sushi's effect on Research rate is also incredible; the Population in each city larger than 20 must be running specialists. Cities can easily support over 20 scientists per city on just the excess food generated by Sid's Sushi.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[TheMeInTeam]

It goes further than that though...did we not just read a very nicely written record-breaking space race victory that made heavy use of Sid's Sushi? How could any non-corporation approach compete with Sushi on deity? This is shaving quite a few turns and yet strangely, no ban consideration . I guess a corporation MASSIVELY increasing a nation's output is *perfectly acceptable*, but creating ? That's just crazy talk !

I've seen arguments along the lines of "no way could spies spread culture in real life", as if culture in real life is easily defined. Where are the arguments saying "I've never seen seafood or cereal corporations push massive amounts of $$$ into research and help set up the infrastructure for interstellar travel"? I don't get it. Why is one implausible mechanism to convert one yield into another widely accepted, and another widely scrutinized?

There has yet to be a logical basis for banning CtE that wouldn't be an equally valid grounds to ban the other major BTS features.

 

[LowtherCastle]

*snip*

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Modification of XML values is not permitted by HoF rules.

You are wrong about the use of the Spread Culture mission being applied to only games using the Espionage assisted Cultural Victory Strategy. I have used the Spread Culture mission in Domination and Conquest games. The intended use is to inject enough of one's own culture prior to capture so the disorder period is reduced to 0t. Your suggested modification of the cost factor would make this tactic too expensive, except on very low culture border cities.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Kaitzilla]

Not sure if it was ok to do it, but I've submitted a 2nd Culture thru Espionage game.

Fastest Culture finish date on the HOF tables if it is accepted!




Only spawned 4 Great People besides the free Great Artist from Music

2 Great Artists (Both at 25% odds , only wanted maybe 1)
1 Great Scientist (Captured the Great Library, used for another golden age)
1 Great Spy

Yup, could have maybe managed the great people better.
Since I nearly got a 2nd great spy at the end, the correct move might have been to give away the Great Scientist city right before the great person popped, but the extra golden age was really useful.

Maybe could have went 100% espionage slider sooner too, but was worried about running out of gold when all the jails and castles were up.

Also, my most humiliating mistake:

Spoiler :

Obsoletes Colossus? Gah!
Forgot that could happen. :suicide::suicide::suicide::suicide::suicide:
Cost about 3 turns on my finish date. Had plenty of spies.

I don't think I ever worked so hard on the diplomacy!
Keeping track of who was plotting war against who required a bunch of scouts deep in various AI territory.
Begged and bribed like crazy to stay out of war.
Put in DeGaulle and Hannibal to act as bait for the other AI to attack. Worked pretty well.

Only some of these AI were at war, but all were plotting in this screenshot. Was like that the whole game.

Spoiler :

 

[Kaitzilla]

No doubt this is just the tip of the iceberg. When I wrote I probably wouldn't beat your game, I meant with the game I already started. I've been out of town for 12 days, so I only have time for the one game I started weeks ago (still not finished). My strategy was to have one culture city and 2 espionage, but now I see that 3 espionage is the way to go for ~500 AD finishes.

This strategy is so broken, you take everything that belongs in a culture game out of it. Even research is no longer very important, religions, wonders, stone/marble, NatEpic city, temples/monasteries/cathedrals, Hermitage, Sistine, FreeSpeech. Nothing is really needed with any urgency. You could probably beat old records with just Pottery (cottage) and Alphabet (spy). You could end the game with zero culture buildings except the free Palace you start with.

It was exciting exploring this new approach (using a Jail!), but now it just feels dirty. I had also started a Deity/Marathon game with a target of BC finish, but I think there should be a freeze on all of these style games until we get a ruling from the staff.

Maybe this is the birth of a new Victory Condition... EV, Espionage Victory.

Very Dirty!

 

[Seraiel]

I just wanna say, that I'm also strongly against the espionage-sort-of-culture-victory. It's not only that it takes everything out of Culture games, it's simply absolutely unbalanced. I think there should be even further restrictions on Espionage, as its simply way too cheap. Sometimes, stealing a tech only costs about 1/4 of the Beakers one would have to invest. That's nothing compared to the Hammers needed for the Spy and towards getting the tech after the AI got it, because getting it via Espionage already has the benefit that the tech doesn't count towards WFYABTA.

This, or you'll see a drastic change from players moving towards Espionage-Economy and it being the only Economy every worthwhile running.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

There are two easy options for avoiding Espionage in Civ IV games:

1) Play Civ IV Warlords or Civ IV Vanilla (Valid for HoF).

2) Play Civ IV Beyond the Sword with the No Espionage option (Not Valid for HoF).

The problem isn't the Espionage System; the problem is the lame AI that makes poor decisions that seem to ignore the presence of the Espionage System.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Also, the AI makes very poor decisions in many other areas of the game too. It is just that in the area of the Espionage System, those decisions allow a player to win a Cultural Victory via the Spread Culture mission somewhat faster than via a Traditional Cultural Victory.

Sun Tzu Wu