Is this an Exploit?

[Ribannah]

This may not be the best example. The most forceful way to use the exploit is probably to build a second Worker normally and only start applying the exploit when you are building Settlers. With the first worker improving the terrain, growth quickly gains importance over hammers. At the same time, you are not investing hammers into something that you don't need (yet), which happens rather often in this stage of the game.

@Aeson: How relevant are these other ways to rush a build, since they are not available in the opening game?

 

[A+ombomb]

I found the best use of chop hammers was towards granaries, since it could produce 60 from scratch or 45 if mostly built (a ton either way).

 

[Smirk]

... exploit ...

Your liberal definition of exploit is leading you astray. With respect to gaming its generally isolated to acts which are well beyond the design or clearly errors or bugs in the code. Such as the gold mine exploit in Civ3, this was clearly a design flaw since you got the production of gold twice in any given turn.

Merely using a powerful strategy is not an exploit. Back in the early days of Civ3 despot rushing was bandied around as an exploit (which was later "fixed" (read: broken) in a patch, and then later still fixed again) but was just the actualization of game mechanics, just as this chopping strategy. The Civ3 example needed some balancing and ramifications but the game mechanic was sound, and its back in Civ4 without the despot part.

I don't agree with any reduction of the forest power and in fact would like to see jungles also give production benefits. Even if you are a tree hugger in real life, this is just a game and to ignore the use of wood for advance of human civilization is absurd. The fact that you get a health bonus at all for forests seems like an agenda to me as I don't understand it.


Another example, albiet a bad one since it was removed, was the chop/regrow strategy in early Civ3. You could plant trees and chop them repeatedly for the production benefit. Sounds crazy, not like we do anything like this in real life...

On a sad note we can't grow new trees in Civ4, poor arborists.

 

[ainwood]

.... so where's the exploit?

<snip>

Unless a technique clearly trashes the designers' objectives for game balance I contend that we should play it as it is.

Agreed. This isn't particularly exploitive, and we're allowing it.

 

[DaviddesJ]

You don't have to do this, and I think it's not the best way to do it. The best way is to activate your worker in 3360, after he's finished chopping for that turn, and cancel the chop order (tell him to "skip turn"). Then, when the next turn comes up, he won't finish the chop until you order him to do so, which lets you do any production finagling that you want, first.

By the way, I think "partial chopping" lasts forever (at least, I haven't seen it expire). This means that "pre-chopping" is a reasonable strategy, and one I expect to see more of in the GOTMs. You can send workers around to all of your forests and do 2 turns of chopping on each. (And maybe build a road, too.) Then, when you want the hammers, you can send worker(s) back into the forest(s) for the final chop(s).

The chop/switch is just sort of a pre-chop where you do the final chop immediately after the pre-chop.

 

[Ribannah]

No, it's not. Surely after all the examples given, that at least must be clear. If not, the best way of understanding what is going on is to do it yourself.

Your liberal definition of exploit is leading you astray. With respect to gaming its generally isolated to acts which are well beyond the design or clearly errors or bugs in the code. Such as the gold mine exploit in Civ3

The tile switch in Civ3 is quite similar to the chop/queue switch in Civ4. Both exploit the limbo that has unintentionally been left between action and counting by fooling half of the application into believing that a different action was performed. And the effects are comparable in magnitude, too.

 

[akots]

Is it being fixed in a new patch 1.52?

 

[Ribannah]

I don't know. Because of a bug the in-game patcher does not work on my system ...

 

[Ribannah]

Despite all kinds of problems - with the new patch, downloaded from Apolyton, Civ4 is suddenly crashing, freezing etc. all the time - I have been able to test it. The bug is still there ....
As are many other bugs.

 

[akots]

Your liberal definition of exploit is leading you astray. With respect to gaming its generally isolated to acts which are well beyond the design or clearly errors or bugs in the code. ...

The forest chop features have a long history of being somewhat broken and then being fixed in Civ3 iirc. Indefinite plant/chop has been fixed in vanilla civ3 in last patch in version 1.29 only (again iirc, may be I'm mistaken here). This might be not as much exploitative overall in civ4 compared to civ3 and is allowed but still it looks somewhat strange if it is an intended feature. On the other hand it is probably more powerful in epic speed games after recent 1.52 patch even considering increased health from forests which had been done apparently to discourage chopping. But lumbermills are so far up the tech tree, it just does not make sense imho. Many games (probably mostly on lower difficulty however) are either over or essentially decided at that point.

It does seem somewhat unbalancing however.

 

[Smirk]

Is there no reason why we currently have an issue with deforestation and a declining rainforest? These trees just died, or we just cut them and did nothing with them.

The ultimate question is do you squander your resources or never use them? Making it less useful to chop forests really does nothing for gameplay, making them less useful denies our history and advancement. You think bronze was made to make shiny armor or was it the axe that came first?
I love nature, but I can easily abstract that love when I play a game of Civilization and have no qualms whatsoever choping down every tree in sight. The great untamed wilderness will be in the tundra and otherwise unusable/unexplored land in my games just as it is in real life.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Is there no reason why we currently have an issue with deforestation and a declining rainforest? These trees just died, or we just cut them and did nothing with them.

Neither. We cut down the trees mostly because we did want to do other things with the land (agricultural and residential use---building farms and cottages, in Civ IV terms).

It does seem a bit odd to me in Civ IV if cutting down trees is so valuable that cutting down all of the trees first is more important than actually building farms or cottages on the land, which comes much later, if at all. But it's just a game.

If the trees are really so valuable, then tree farming (planting new trees to cut them down) should be an option in the game, just as it is in real life. You could imagine a system where the regrowth of the trees actually takes time measured in real years, not game turns, so it becomes less useful as the pace of the game accelerates. This could actually be a pretty interesting game mechanism.

 

[solenoozerec]

The great untamed wilderness will be in the tundra and otherwise unusable/unexplored land in my games just as it is in real life.

I cut those too
Actulay it looks like they give more hammers compared to normal forests.

 

[DaveMcW]

If the trees are really so valuable, then tree farming (planting new trees to cut them down) should be an option in the game, just as it is in real life. You could imagine a system where the regrowth of the trees actually takes time measured in real years, not game turns, so it becomes less useful as the pace of the game accelerates. This could actually be a pretty interesting game mechanism.

It's called a lumbermill.

 

[Aeson]

@Aeson: How relevant are these other ways to rush a build, since they are not available in the opening game?

The opening game (in regards to expansion) is nowhere near as important in CIV as it has been in previous versions.

Cash rushing is available at the Pyramids.

Regular Forest Chopping is available at Bronze Working and can be used in conjunction with multiple Forest Chops to one turn build a Settler or Worker as well.

A well developed capitol in Bureaucracy can build Workers in one turn rather early on in the game too. It's slower than the other two, but much more flexible.

Any decent city with production overflow + good production + Forest Chop should be able to do 1 turn Workers rather early.

But the root of the issue lies not in whether chop and swap is a good move. Even if it was a good move all the time, that doesn't make it an exploit. To illustrate this as clearly as possible, take the most important decisions in any game... one being whether or not to disband your starting Settler(s). Is it an exploit to not disband your starting Settler(s) just because it's obviously the best choice?

 

[Ribannah]

Dear Aeson,

What makes it an exploit is that you gain an unintended advantage.

The opening game (in regards to expansion) is nowhere near as important in CIV as it has been in previous versions.

Eh, yes it is.

 

[civ_steve]

Unintended advantage? Forest Chopping, delayed Worker actions, and production changes are all basic game mechanisms. Their use is obviously intended. Combining them in whatever manner the player deems is best is an obvious extension of these basic mechanisms, and is part of what makes CIV and GOTM interesting - how will a particular player combines these and other mechanisms to achieve a good result.

Ribannah - you have argued that this tactic is SO powerful that everyone will have to do it to be competitive, and that this makes the game less interesting because everyone would be forced to do the same thing every game. On the other hand, outlawing lots of different tactics because 'someone' felt they were exploitive would have the same effect. Forcing everyone to play in some restricted manner so as to not offend the 'exploit police'. And causing a lot more confusion as to what is permitted, what isn't, and putting a lot more pressure on the staff to identify games where exploits have been used.

I would prefer to save the term 'exploit' for game breaking tactics or obvious bugs in the way the game works.

 

[Jove]

This sure doesn't compare to the Distant Palace bug in Civ3. Remember? If you put your capitol 50 tiles away from every other city, any city within 50 tiles of the FP would have essentially no corruption. Talk about a game-breaker! You'd have quadruple or whatever the production of anyone who didn't do it, for one, and it obviously didn't feel like the way the Palace and FP were supposed to work.

This... c'mon. I did it in my noob gotm without really examining it. Stack o' 3 workers to a forest on the same turn a project finishes, chop, switch... it seems pretty natural to me. Maybe it's a bit zippier than the wimpy 5-25% bonuses Civ4 seems to offer at every opportunity, sure. But it doesn't seem like anything more than using the clearly intended multiple product feature.

 

[Ravellion]

I don't think it's a bug. In all the examples given, no one has taken into account that if you don't chop, you can chop later. This sounds obvious but see the forests as a 30 shield resource which you can spend once. Sure you can go all out and waste them all on your early workers. Or you waste them later on a wonder. Or a granery. Or barracks.

Point is, people are giving chopping more credit than it deservers. The general principle here is that someone shouts ' look I get a 'free' worker ' and calls it a bug just because his city doesn't ' suffer' from growth stop. If someone would have made a topic about a granery being chopped which essentially gave him a free granery (look! no 'shield' growth stop, I can use my shields for something else now!!!!), so it clearly must be a bug, it would have been locked immediatly.

The outcome of the examples given are just snapshots provided to give a false sense of edge if you use this method. The only interesting data would be further in the game to see if the early chopping would be really beneficial (at which point countless other factors would have influenced the outcome), since method C can gain turns by rushing buildings which method A cannot since it drained all the forests. True, an early extra worker early on is nice, but in no circumstance is this ' the only true way ' to go. It's a strategic decission. Just as it is a strategic decission to NOT chop, but save them to rush a wonder. Or a strategic decission to save chops for a settler.

Don't confuse strategic decissions with exploits.

 

[ainwood]

Eh, yes it is.

Not in terms of the Civ3 play where the 'best' strategy was getting as many cities as possible as fast as possible (4-turn settler factory).