HOF Rules Discussion

[EMan]

The math is simple: 1 specialist with 0 food upkeep beats 1 happy person with 2 food upkeep. Calculate a bit more and you'll see you can score 80k on regent with a dozen cities at 9999 pop.

I'm surprised nobody has quoted these words of wisdom........I must confess that because DaveMcW said it (a.k.a. EF Hutton), I needed to think about what he said. (viz. Listen.)

Giving credit where credits due, Worker Dogpiling was about Dave's quote.......Not about getting faster Wonders/Quicker Techs. The idea of adding workers to a rioting city AND not losing them 1 per turn (as in Dogpiling) was pretty ingenius......I tip my hat to the creator! (Sorry, can't remember who came up with it!....Please take a bow!)

Dave's right, of course but with 2 caveats, to wit:
1.

Suggested wording:
"You may not join workers to a city that is starving."

I would add the words "or rioting" at the end of the sentence.

2. DaveMcW is perfectly correct when it comes to High Score......BUT, the HOF has changed.......the Majority of the Lists are now about Fast Finishes! (viz. 20K/100K/UN/Conquest/Domination/Spaceship) where Score doesn't matter!

A final thought for a discussion I for one am glad HAPPENED!:

Does "Dogpiling" ensure a quicker win?

 

[SirPleb]

Though this dogpiling discussion seems to be winding down I want to voice my support for explicitly banning it. I.e. disallow adding workers to starving or rioting cities.

To me it seems that there are two oversights in this area int the game's implementation:
1) A rioting city should not produce anything. No contribution to culture, score, production, income, science, nada.
2) If a city produces less food than it needs, the rate of starvation should correspond to the size of the deficit. As things stand at most 1 citizen starves per turn and that's wrong when the food shortage is great.

Those two problems create a number of loopholes as illustrated in this thread. At least some of them have severe consequences in competitive games. Other ways to abuse dogpiling for faster victories might be discovered in future. But since it can already be significantly abused for score and research speed that's already enough reason to ban it. (Either alone would be enough I think.)

Regarding the question raised earlier on the thread about the expense of producing the workers, I think that doesn't really help because they are very cheap to produce vs. their value. For instance, if a corrupt city has enough food to support 6 citizens, then it can instead be growing at size 5 all the time and building a worker instead of being steady at a size 6 and producing one extra gold per turn. Every 10 turns, out pops a new worker, a never ending supply. 100 cities doing this for 100 turns will produce 1000 citizens in the form of workers. With the Pyramids the already low cost (being at size 5 instead of 6) of this operation gets smaller again. Those 1000 workers can dogpile to add a LOT more to one's score than was lost by not having 1 extra citizen in 100 towns.

As for whether there are any past games on the HOF which used dogpiling, I'd say just remove it if any is discovered. I think the effect if used for great advantage will be detectable. And it seems so clearly exploitive that if someone used it and thinks that should be ok since it wasn't explicitly forbidden (vs. asking first), too bad. Something like this is exploitive enough that one should ask before assuming.

 

[superslug]

Though this dogpiling discussion seems to be winding down I want to voice my support for explicitly banning it. I.e. disallow adding workers to starving or rioting cities.

That's exactly how I worded it when I updated the rules thread a few hours ago. I wanted to be careful not to ban intentional city rioting in itself. It's occasionally useful to prevent wasting a palace prebuild that started too early.

 

[Gyathaar]

The thing that isnt covered by the rule change that isnt covered is bringing cities to max size (most likely to size 12 when it is most useful), either through normal growth or joing workers, and them deliverately making them riot by cutting off trade routes so it dont get luxes and/or lowering lux tax.. then make as many scientists as possible while still keeping it in riot.

The riotting will cost you nothing in a fastest win game (you dont even need any buildings in it, just build on fresh water). Result is you get lots of research from normally totally corrupt cities.

This is something that happens naturally when you switch governments and have few luxes connected.. the big cities will go into riot and would starve if you didnt make scientists or taxmen, and can allow quite a nice science rate while you are in anarchy.

Should deliberately making these rioting science or bank towns be allowed (outside anarchy)? Would be hard to check if they were ever created.. all you had to do is to connect them to luxes with road or harbor again, and they become a normal size 12(+) town again.

 

[superslug]

The thing that isnt covered by the rule change that isnt covered is bringing cities to max size (most likely to size 12 when it is most useful), either through normal growth or joing workers, and them deliverately making them riot by cutting off trade routes so it dont get luxes and/or lowering lux tax.. then make as many scientists as possible while still keeping it in riot.

A good point, and something I find an unacceptable tactic. It's the same as worker dogpile, just on a smaller scale.

Let me throw this on the fire-with the exception of stalling a prebuild, can anyone think of any reason I shouldn't ban intentional rioting? Once I make up my mind, I'm not going to change it.

 

[Gyathaar]

Actually an extension of this would be to turn an empire with ICS cities into size 30+ metropolises.. make a city work as many food squares as possible.. grow or join worker till max size, cut roads (leave irrigation), sell market and happiness buildings.. put 3-4 citizens to work, make rest specialists and let city riot. Now next city in line gets all the freed up squares and can grow to max.. repeat as long as you have cities.
This ofcourse would be a lot of work and highly detectable... and mostly useful for milking smaller maps (for huge maps you would be better off making more spaced out cities with more happy citizens I believe, else you would be far from the domination limit)

 

[EMan]

We shouldn't even be having this discussion.

Hey, c'mon Dave......it's been most enlightening and entertaining!
How many HOF threads do you get the likes of yourself, SirPleb, Aeson, Moonsinger, et al, Posting within a 24-hour period about the same topic?!

I wanted to be careful not to ban intentional city rioting in itself. It's occasionally useful to prevent wasting a palace prebuild that started too early.

Good one......Did you put it in the "Single Player Tips" thread?

The only other situation I can think of is where you maintain a newly Captured City in a temporary state of Civil Disorder to prevent starvation. The choice can often be: Orderly Starvation or Civil Disorder!

New HOF Rule for consideration: "Intentional city rioting is banned except to stall a Pre-build or prevent starvation."

An additional downside to the exceptions is that "The Mob" may destroy your city's buildings!

 

[Doc Tsiolkovski]

"Intentional city rioting is banned except to stall a Pre-build or prevent a city from starving."

But, when I join 6 workers, I need to incite a riot to prevent starving (when I redistribute the tiles the city was working while joining)...

I know what you mean, but the wording opens a new loophole.
I have no problem with the prebuild. But for the starving - I'd only allow Alternating riot cycles then. The only legitime situation is IMHO during Anarchy. In any other case, you should either fix the happiness, or the city should indeed starve. I even think "to prevent starving" should be banned, it should read "to delay starving".

 

[EMan]

But, when I join 6 workers, I need to incite a riot to prevent starving (when I redistribute the tiles the city was working while joining)...

I know what you mean, but the wording opens a new loophole.
I have no problem with the prebuild. But for the starving - I'd only allow Alternating riot cycles then. The only legitime situation is IMHO during Anarchy.....

Good point. However, in your example, you don't NEED to incite a riot to prevent starvation!? (Simply work sufficient food squares.)

Why should it then be legitimate during Anarchy?

What's an "Alternating riot cycle"?

 

[Doc Tsiolkovski]

I only talk about joining workers for a Scientist/Taxman farm, not to simply bring city size up (perfectly legal).

Because you cannot fix happiness during Anarchy. No rushing, no Luxury Slider.

Alternating cycles = 1 turn of Anarchy, fix it, let it riot again. That way, a city will only consume food every second turn, and the city improvements will not be ransacked by the mob. A common practise in SGs.
Exploit? No. The AI simply sees no 9 turn Anarchy on the higher levels.
And btw, I think it was a wrong decision to have the tile penalty in Anarchy anyway. Many mods did remove that, Anarchy is ugly enough on the higher levels, while the AI is simply not affected.

 

[Moonsinger]

2) If a city produces less food than it needs, the rate of starvation should correspond to the size of the deficit. As things stand at most 1 citizen starves per turn and that's wrong when the food shortage is great.

But that would open up another loopholes! For example, you can capture a city and starve all its citzens within a few turns...of course, this may be a good thing.

 

[Moonsinger]

I wanted to be careful not to ban intentional city rioting in itself. It's occasionally useful to prevent wasting a palace prebuild that started too early.

Thanks for the tip! That's a very cool trick! I'm learning something new every day.

 

[Moonsinger]

Should deliberately making these rioting science or bank towns be allowed (outside anarchy)? Would be hard to check if they were ever created.. all you had to do is to connect them to luxes with road or harbor again, and they become a normal size 12(+) town again.

I believe that you would still be gaining points for every specialist, happy, and content people whether your city is in riot, anarchy, or not; therefore, it's possible to tell just by looking at the ratio of the score. I'm not sure what the correct ratio is....I'm going to leave that to the experts.

PS: For those that didn't know...there is a balance ratio between the number of happy citizens verus specialists; therefore, by looking at the final score or the score at any given time in the playback history, you could easily determine if the player has been dogpiling or not.

 

[EMan]

I only talk about joining workers for a Scientist/Taxman farm, not to simply bring city size up (perfectly legal).

I guess all I'm saying is: "If you CAN prevent starvation you should NOT be allowed to incite a riot, except to stall a pre-build."

Because you cannot fix happiness during Anarchy.

Why can't you convert a Laborer to an Entertainer?

I guess I don't see why an exception should be made for Anarchy.....Every government has its pros and cons!

Are you suggesting that it should be okay to incite a riot in cities during Anarchy?

 

[Gyathaar]

Thanks for the tip! That's a very cool trick! I'm learning something new every day.

I had never thought of this myself either

 

[EMan]

Alternating cycles = 1 turn of Anarchy, fix it, let it riot again. That way, a city will only consume food every second turn, and the city improvements will not be ransacked by the mob.

So, are you suggesting it's okay to incite a riot for ANY reason, providing you restore Order the FOLLOWING turn?....AND, only when the Government is Anarchy?

 

[LulThyme]

I would think it should be ok to have city riot anytime, but then you wouldnt be allowed to workers or make specialists in them or something close to that...

 

[Offa]

This thread has been impressively active since I last looked. Banning "dogpiling" (as adding workers to cities that can't feed them seems to be known) is clearly the right decision. I think that the outlier in the gotm Jason scores statistic (gotm 8) was achieved by ruthless exploitation of this tactic, although the benefits clearly have been changed since then.

In general I think that exploits banned in GOTM should have to have some very good reason to be allowed in the HOF. The GOTM rule set is very liberal.

I believe (i.e. I'm not sure) that reloads to avoid domination are allowed in the HOF, but as utilities such as dianthus' mapstat are now widely used this could also be banned without much impact. I can't imagine SirPleb and Moonsinger needed to reload to avoid domination.

 

[EMan]

I believe (i.e. I'm not sure) that reloads to avoid domination are allowed in the HOF

Yes, they are.

I can't imagine SirPleb and Moonsinger needed to reload to avoid domination and is a proponent of the Rule. (Well, he used to be anyways!)

I think actually SirPleb has reloaded due to accidental Domination. The "old" MapStat, pre-Dianthus, was pretty good for Vanilla Civ/PTW but I think the greatest difficulty with Domination Limit comes when you are ABANDONING/RELOCATING your cities to maximise Population points in a Milk Run.

I have suggested this for CRpMapStat whereby IF you abandon a city, how many squares WOULD you regain?..........in the middle game it can be difficult to figure out if you have several cultured cities (viz. culture > 10 or > 100) clustered together. It can be easy to exceed the Domination Limit in this situation.

For example: You're 1 under the DL....you abandon a city thinking you are "Re-claiming" 9 squares and build a new 9-square city somewhere else. BUT, you forgot that a city near the "old" city has say 150 culture points and thus the Borders were NOT actually reduced in such a way as to give you the 9 squares you thought you were getting!

 

[Dianthus]

This thread has been impressively active since I last looked. Banning "dogpiling" (as adding workers to cities that can't feed them seems to be known) is clearly the right decision.

You probably missed "The Chief" saying this, but "dogpiling" was originally on the list of banned exploits. It was removed fairly recently since we started only accepting games for the latest versions. We thought the bug allowing large amounts of workers to be added was fixed. Looks like we were wrong .