Is this ROP exploit allowable?

[MSGT John Drew]

Blockading all tiles around an enemy city through an ROP (capital or not) with the intent of disallowing further improvement of its workable tiles - should it be allowed or not?

e.g. surrounding all 21 tiles around a city with your units to prevent RR building, mining, road bldg, irrigation, etc... in addition, also reworking those tiles with your own miners e.g. changing mines to irrigation.

In my opinion, it is as evil as resource denial. I tried it on a recent deity game and I flatlined the leading civ's capital's shield production at 20+ while my capital shot up to 60 and even when my capital has reached 100+ production their capital city remained at 20+ sh production.

 

[Yndy]

I'd say it's not honorable (as in Realms Beyond honorable) but I wouldn't call it an exploit. After all, you spend 20g per turn for those units and you spend 200 shields at least to build those units.

So it takes some effort to do this and maybe a downfall (isn’t that the AI would be pissed by this?) plus you need 5 turns to make them lose the shield amount you have used to block the city, plus worker time, and maintenance of the whole bunch.

Note this is not an official answer but a speculation

 

[cracker]

If you have a ROP with the victim, they will still be able to assigne "citizens" to work the tiles around the city and you cannot do total resource denial by pillaging because that would cause war.

Yndy, is correct that there is a cost associated with this activity in terms of the capital costs of units plus theire per turn.

An example of where you virtually have to use this technique is railroads in your territory or the victims territory. WHne the victim does not have the ability to build his/her own railroads, if you have a ROP whith them you can build railroads through their territory for them. The victim can use the railroads in their own territory under any circumstances and can use the railroads in your territory if you give them a ROP. Stationing units lined up on the railroads is the only way to assure that the railroads will remain open for your use and this effectively denies them to your ally/victim.

It seems sort of dastardly, but the AI will do it to you just out of ignorance and stupidity that exploits the fact that you cannot pass through the squares occupied by any units from other civs.

I frequently find myself wishing that Firaxis had implemented the unit ability to "capture" and escort units out of your territory when they released PTW. They sort of did this and expended much of the programming cost whne they implemented capture the cutie-pie, but they did it such a way that the ability cannot be used at this time to support an MP or Sheriff type function.

SO, the answer is "Park your butt right there and irrigate or plant forests to your heart's content."

 

[MSGT John Drew]

there is a cost, of course, but i'm referring to games where you are behind all the others (deity level). i don't know if you have noticed this but the AI really doesn't prioritize capital city tiles when they build RRs.

you can even use your early game units to fill the slots (regular warriors, spearmen, etc...) and as you'll notice there is a lull in city improvements/wonders at that time (you're just wasting lots of shields by building units/wealth after factory/coal plant). and since this can only be done in the industrial age, you'll be producing more than enough gold that these units will not be so much as a blip on your gpt. instead you'll be doing more harm since you are practically disabling one of their core-cities.

of course, this is not possible if you're playing warmonger (since your neighbor becomes an early target) but for really peaceful games (I did manage to make all the other 7 civs gracious towards me) it is not as difficult as you put it.

 

[cracker]

Drew,

I would spend less time worrying about obscure exploits in general because we test some of these and find that they may be exploitive in some ways but may not really impact your score or game progress most of the time.

When you have played a few games and begun to get a better perception of how some of these exploits are just "things to do" when you are behind or off pace with the upper rnages of the game.

I know this may be hard to grasp, but those things that make small differences between 165th place and 163rd place do not pose too much risk to the overall concepts of fair play.

You will find that the high scoring games are determined by focused startegic game play that begins even before the game is loaded and that these small exploit issues may be more of a distraction than an advantage whne you start looking at how your games may compare to the successful games of others.

I'll have an example of how we deal with a real exploit for you in just a couple of days.