GOTM #8 *Spoilers* Thread

[cracker]

I vote this as the all time most fantastic exploit revealled in CIV3.

If Firaxis does not send you a free advance copy of PTW so you can begin an early witch hunt for unforeseen things like this, then I think someone is definiately asleep at the switch.

This truly and amazing exploit and it produces an almost unimaginable outcome.

I am so impressed.

 

[God]

Where are you getting all these workers from to put in your city? You can't constantly produce workers in your other cities because soon there will be nobody left there. And at the most you can have 800 or so workers. And you're adding 100+ each turn.

 

[Pelman]

Originally posted by cracker
Pelman,

Tell us what happened as the outcome from Joan's parking all those infantry next to your cities in post #43 or so??

We know you survived, but what was really going on at that point in the game. AI Random unintellible behavior or was it an attack pending to somewhere that you were not paying attention to?

There was no attack...ever!.
I have since figured out why everyone was so gracious to me.
When you have an alliance to destroy someone your allies become quite gracious.

So I believe Joan was just helping me out because I was obviously too stupid to improve that very lucrative square (a mountain with gold).

 

[Cartouche Bee]

Bamspeedy,

Because of the pollution problem, I stored up as many specialists in all the other cities as I could until I got ecology. Then I rushed workers where ever there were surplus specialists. This all sounds so easy but you and I know that there is alot to be learned from this exercise.

I'm lucky I don't have to deal with the dynamics on a huge map. Those deity players really get an edge cause they can get through the tech tree alot quicker, thus a higher potential score.

CB

 

[Bamspeedy]

I am sure that the other civs are not capable of this, but wouldn't it just suck if they nuked Washington. Talk about a major population loss.

I only have 1 opponent left, with 1 city in the middle of the desert. With her city stuck at size 1 she will never be able to build a worker to irrigate that desert even if she does get the electricity tech. Cleo only has 2 techs in the middle ages.

Where are you getting all these workers from to put in your city? You can't constantly produce workers in your other cities because soon there will be nobody left there. And at the most you can have 800 or so workers. And you're adding 100+ each turn.

Having every city (except the capital and 1 wonder-city) producing nothing but workers is exactly what I am doing. With every tile irrigated, they grow faster than they can build a worker. With a very dense build it doesn't take very much to keep those people happy, nor too many citizens before it starts producing specialists. Now that I have tons of cash, I rush buy a worker in every city I see that has a specialist. All you are doing is transferring a specialist from one city to another. As long as you are only losing the specialist, and not the happy person working a tile, you will not be losing any points. The city that lost a specialist now has more food to produce another specialists/worker. Meanwhile Washington loses just 1 specialist/turn, whether it had 200 people or 2000.

I think the points are calculated AFTER workers are built. After rushing several hundred workers on one turn, my points/turn increase dropped. But on the next turn, after those workers got added into the capital my increase of points/turn went back up and above what I was making before. This may come into play around 2048 or 2049 A.D.

I have probably about 473 cities or so. The limit is 512. So I could have had another 39 cities building workers to help my score. I have a few cities on islands, but I'm not going to worry about ferrying workers from there, too much of bother.

 

[cracker]

God,

I think the key point is POP POINT PRODUCTION. Post Railroad a typical city in an empire with the pyramids can easily grow one person per turn when there are no specialists sidetracking food.

Most of us don't see this because our mindset is fixated on stabilizing the cities so they will be happy and stable.

When these guys get to longevity, each pop point is only costing 5 food units in the ICS type cities of 6 people. I could easily see the cities cranking out 1 worker per turn and growing by 2 pop points every other turn.

With most cities other than the Specialist Concentration Camp set only to produce food, pop points, and workers. You could get by with only one library and one university for the whole empire. Gives a whole new meaning to starving students on a grand scale.

The Rallying points feature in the XP will even make this exploit easier to do since you just set the cities to automagically send all their output of worker units straight to the Soylent Green City.

I have always viewd the Longevity wonder as a royal PITA since it came too late to assist in empire growth. Now I see that its primary purpose is to enable growth that will exceed the starvation rate. We need one of the advisors to automatically convert to looking like an Edgar G Robinson character and we need a special unit that looks like the Soylent Green "crowd control" trucks to make this exploit into a complete scenario.

Hopefully, the firaxis block to this exploit will be via a General settings flag that lets you toggle this exploit back on for the Soylent Green mod or mods based on out of control popualtion growth.

Just too cool!!!

 

[philippe]

please this is a bummer for players who already played GOTM8 like menow the poeple who start late will use that and have massive scores

 

[Bamspeedy]

With most cities other than the Specialist Concentration Camp set only to produce food, pop points, and workers. You could get by with only one library and one university for the whole empire. Gives a whole new meaning to starving students on a grand scale.

I have 0 libraries, 0 univerities, 0 banks, 0 courthouses. Learn a new tech every 4 turns and make over 2400 gold/turn profit with science at 10%. With science at 0% I will be making over 6000 gold/turn, and that will continue to increase. I eventually want 1 or 0 specialists per city. The more specialists in a city, the slower it takes for each city to add another pop point. With placing cities ICS style I have almost no cities making over 10 shields/turn so they easily grow faster than I can build a worker.

 

[Bamspeedy]

please this is a bummer for players who already played GOTM8 like menow the poeple who start late will use that and have massive scores

Well, for anyone to beat Cartouche Bee's score, they would have to plan for playing the game like this from the start. And if they do that, they obviously read the spoiler thread and they cheated!

 

[philippe]

yeah with tha map someone posted for barb camps some a$$holes will use it in their advantage.
i had a tough time in gotm8 but i did well without cheating russia destroyed1650bc france 560 ad england around 1000 ad and so on....and all without cheating but now we will see russia destroyed in 2000BC england in 1500BC france 500BC if you get the point

 

[Sullla]

This is ridiculous! This is so far outside the spirit of the way Civ3 is supposed to be played that it boggles the mind. Everyone seems to agree this is an exploit, so we can all agree that there should be an end to this, right? I mean my god, milking is one thing, but this is waaaay past that, and not in a good way. Are you playing Civ3, or are you trying to see how high you can get the scoring machine to go? It's one thing to maximize score by staying just below the domination threshhold; if you want to waste your time when the game's already won that's your own business. But using a programming loophole to create a city with 5000 people in it so your score can increase without bound? Forget it. And this is now a "brilliant strategy?" It's clever, but it's a game-breaking feature. Is this "fun" to those who are doing it? Does this mean that those players who play this way are somehow "better" because their scores are higher than everyone else? I will never use this, and if this is the way the GOTM is going, I'm out RIGHT NOW.

Now I'll admit that this is mighty clever, and those who came up with it independently should have their due in this game (I guess, though it essentially ruins the competition for all those who don't do so). But seriously guys, this needs to end after this game. It's not meant to be part of Civ3, and it's going to ruin any future competition game if it isn't closed out.

 

[philippe]

i TOTTALY agreee sulla.if it is not banned NOW in GOTM8 i will be the last one because i didnt use that "cheat"

 

[cracker]

Phillipe,

Most people will not be able to cheat effectively because the game is deeper than just knowing where things are on the map.

Your score would not be benefited the map of barb camps as they were randomly placed on my map in 270BC becasue your map would never look like that. There is a less than 1 in 30 billion chance that you would play the first 200 truns just the way that I played them or just the way that CB or Bam played their games.

I sense that you will gain skill and patience with time, but for now the performance of others will not have as great an impact on your score as other self improvement stratgeies that only seem to come with practice and time.

While many people may read this thread and say "Kewl, lets do that", there are only 4 high score awards to go around and I will bet that all those get claimed y masters who have at least three or four shots at refining this exploit strategy.

All this is good because it means that we end up partitioned in to game play segments by the scoring system. You will see the power players working on a variety of different game play strategies and end game sequences to enhance their enjoyment.

You can do this as well and then just live it up (except on Diety level which generally sucks about 50% of the time )

 

[cracker]

I have to add that this "Soylent Green" exploit is more than just "bloody brilliant", I am in awe of the discovery and also in awe of the level of refinement that has been applied in a short time.

Its definately an exploit in the standard sense of the game, but man it opens a whole new realm of possibilities in scenario play.

Since the AI won't be able to figure this one out, I am fairly sure how this will turn out.

But every post about this subject should start out with reverent awe for the core group that mastered the technique. All this whining and cheating screaming fails to recognize the sheer brilliance of the game play here.

I find it not even painful to loose to this strategy because it is super human brilliant. But the strategy is also so overpoweringly brilliant that it alters the game to another totally different levle of objective attainment.

Sid has the travel specialist at Firaxis working on getting an airline ticket and hotel reservation for Bamspeedy right now, just so he can personally shake the hand of the man that totally dismantled Soren's game play outline.

Just brilliant!!! Absolutely brilliant!!

 

[God]

I'd have to agree with Sulla on this one. Even though he consider's a lot of things exploits which I don't, this one is going way to far. I wonder if they will even allow this in HOF.

And come guys, its a GOTM, a competition. If you want to go for a high score do it in the HOF. Here we're competing against each other.

Some GOTMers do milk their games, but I don't think anybody seriously puts this much time into it. I don't its going to be very fun if everybody starts doing these things.

I could have milked my game to whatever points. But instead I ended it early with a spaceship launch. Meanwhile I do have a couple of HOF games going on. Yeah I'll use all the strategies in the book for that one, but not for a friendly competition.

What makes GOTM fun, is not just scoring and getting no.1 position in the GOTM charts, but comparing stories and ideas. I didn't play GOTM 7 but I read alot on it. I may try it sometime on my own. Also reading stories such as Sulla's and Zach's are what GOTM is about.

Keep the milking in the HOF and the fun easy gaming alone in the GOTM.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Sulla, I knew when I saw you browsing this forum you would chime in with your unual 'ethics' on proper game play. At least this tactic does not treat the AI like the ****** it is, when you want us to treat it like a human being and 'play fair'. This only affects score and does not help the human beat the computer in any way (unless you win by histographic, I suppose). I consider some exploits like scout resource denial are no worse than sending an obsolete unit(s) to pillage so the AI sends most, if not all of it's units at the pillager instead of attacking your army or cities. You think that second one is a great tactic and 'smoke and mirrors'. Would a human player fall for the pillager tactic?

Do I think this should be banned in future GOTM's?
Of course. But if it isn't this someone will figure out a way to ring the score up even more. But I hear alot of comments from people like "I don't play for score". So why should they care anyways?

Just shows how faulty the game's scoring system is. They based the score on average throughout the whole game, so you couldn't just get all the land, and crank luxury up to 100% on the last turn to get an impossible to beat score. To score higher, you have to get to domination faster. Not true anymore.

Philippe- You can't ban this for this GOTM. Cartouche Bee has already played most of his game and you can't add a rule in the middle of a game. For the next GOTM, sure go ahead and ban it. But I think you using your worker to send 200 barbarian horsemen at Russia to wipe out thier military and gold, so that their capital is undefended is an exploit also.

Since we all agree that the game's scoring system is faulty, does anyone have a better idea on figuring out who played the 'best game'?

 

[SirPleb]

I also think that the population stuffing is an exploit and should (after this GOTM) be banned. I hit this loophole quite a while ago by accident when I stuffed a whack of workers into one city to get rid of them. I was quite surprised to see them starve at just one per turn - that clearly (to me) is a bug which exposes unintended scoring. I haven't used it since, it seems to me to be an exploit which is as clearly out of bounds as the no-corruption trick, though this one is a lot more work I don't think it will be hard for Firaxis to fix and I hope they do eventually. The logical fix to my mind is for the starvation rate to increase as the population:food ratio increases. I.e. the more excess population, the more that starve per turn. Simple solution which was probably their intent anyway.

 

[Sullla]

Originally posted by Bamspeedy
Since we all agree that the game's scoring system is faulty, does anyone have a better idea on figuring out who played the 'best game'?

Well, since competitions based only on score are inevitably going to follow the same pattern in every game (who can get to the domination limit first, generally speaking), I've been spending time playing in the Realms Beyond Epics recently. These games each have their own scoring system, which is usually designed to causes the player to do unusual or unorthodox things to score points. The focus of the games is on comparing stories afterwards and discussing the way events played out differently in each game, and not so much on who "won" the game. It's not for everyone, but I think those who are becoming bored with a system where score is the only thing evaluated might be interested in taking a look.

I do not play in the Tournament run on this site by Grey Fox, but it also seems to be organized well to avoid running up score in the endgame. The GOTM should retain its traditional scoring formula and will always have plenty of players, but I offer these alternatives for those who are interested in other ways of comparing games.

 

[Cartouche Bee]

Originally posted by Sullla


Well, since competitions based only on score are inevitably going to follow the same pattern in every game (who can get to the domination limit first, generally speaking), I've been spending time playing in the Realms Beyond Epics recently. These games each have their own scoring system, which is usually designed to causes the player to do unusual or unorthodox things to score points. The focus of the games is on comparing stories afterwards and discussing the way events played out differently in each game, and not so much on who "won" the game. It's not for everyone, but I think those who are becoming bored with a system where score is the only thing evaluated might be interested in taking a look.

I do not play in the Tournament run on this site by Grey Fox, but it also seems to be organized well to avoid running up score in the endgame. The GOTM should retain its traditional scoring formula and will always have plenty of players, but I offer these alternatives for those who are interested in other ways of comparing games.

Hi Sulla,

Well we just did something unorthodox and as you say not everyone was pleased. Problem with these kinds of things is that they get discovered and not exposed. They can not be addressed unless they are exposed, so it's our duty to expose these things. In the long run the game is better for it. Many times no one wants to listen cause they might have to take some sort of action.

As for the so called tournament, they still haven't revealed a scoring system. I assume the scoring will be adjusted to highlight the games they like best, for reasons yet to be disclosed. Kind of like when we were kids and made the rules as we went or did not disclose the rules except to the inner circle.

The GOTM is played for fun and points. Everyone knows it rated on points scored and sometimes it's hard to accept what others score but that is the way it is.

CB

 

[Bamspeedy]

Well we just did something unorthodox and as you say not everyone was pleased. Problem with these kinds of things is that they get discovered and not exposed. They can not be addressed unless they are exposed, so it's our duty to expose these things. In the long run the game is better for it. Many times no one wants to listen cause they might have to take some sort of action.

The scoring system is one thing that Firaxis has not addressed. People have exposed many exploits in this game that firaxis has fixed with patches, etc. (bombard anywhere, trading cities, 'multi'-cheat, etc.). I don't know if Firaxis ever reads the GOTM threads, so someone will have to post something in the general discussions forum to alert them to this. I do know they at least read the general discussion forums.

Like Cartouche Bee said, someone could have found this exploit and continued doing this, without anyone discovering it. They could use this, then abandon the city on the last turn. Unless someone downloaded the game and watched the replay no one would know. You would be puzzled "why the heck did they abandon a city on the very last turn?" Now we know.

Realm beyond Epics sounds like a good tournament, but like you said, it's not for everyone. The goal of GOTM is just using the standard rules of the game going after the standard victory conditions. If you award points for certain things, people will find ways to use these to be able to rack up the 'score' more or easier than someone who played just as good of a game and was of the same skill level. With enough people you will always find more efficient/easier ways of racking up the points.

The tournament on this site is emphasizing fast finishes. They don't want to totally ignore points (someone who finished 1 turn later, but scored 1000 more points should not lose). They've gone to the extreme of weighting turns to score with a 10:1 ratio (the game score accounts for 9% of your tournament score). But even with this method someone who finished real early with a one-city challange will most likely lose to someone who finished much later with a bigger empire. The guy with the 1 city played a better game IMO.

What I kinda meant by 'any better ideas', I was asking for changes that should by done to the scoring system that Firaxis could do to make it more reasonable. For example:1. Award an early win bonus based on turns, not years, and it being high enough that could never be achieved through 'milking'. 2. Award points for wonders, improvements, great leaders, etc.