Is Whip/Chop overflow an Exploit? I say No

[Shurdus]

Seriously people.

We're talking about magically creating 400+ within five or so turns, before Writing, not to mention Currency, where upkeep is usually sth ~7gpt

You can do this every time you want as long as you have forests (which can often regrow if chopped early), without fail. Low on money? Well, let's fix it! 6 turns later we're back in business...And you think that it's not a dirty trick? (if "exploit" term requires thoroughed definition, let's use a better term) I mean, it's like finding five tribal huts and pop them all for gold every time.

I don't know, to me it's like buying gold in MMORPG and argue that "I work, it's my money, I'm investing into my entertainment, leave me alone"


Because thing like that you have to plan them. Find a wonder you can build, connect +100% resource, spend some time building/chopping it without any real effect than slow you down, and then sit and wait until it's built somewhere. Who knows when?

With chopwhip for gold you can easily tie everything up within sth like 6 turns. Boom and it's done, you have large amount of gold as soon as you want, no ifs.

I'm with mi6agent on this one.

It is not 'magically creating 400+ ' at all. It comes at a price. You could use the forrests to whip infrastructure. You chose to get some gold instead. This will cost you later, because now you need to slow build that buildings you need later. You can chopwhip those buildings and then build wealth later or slowbuild them without the possibility to build wealth. It is a tradeoff, and a legit one at that.

If this hammers to gold bothers you so much then I fail to see why building in some mudhole is valid. Because you teched currency by then?

If taken to the extreme any logics fail. This game is not meant to be really picked apart and to examine every little detail. This game is simplified so that it remains simple enough to be easily grasped and complex enough that you have some interesting choices. This mechanicis just another one of the ones that makes the game more interesting. Some maps allow you to expand really fast, others do not.

If we could all use our fantasy: Ok, maybe this makes very little sense, but let us put it this way. Your barracks created with chopwipping required quite some hammers. Maybe those hammers were not magically transferred, but the overflow represented some extra effort that went into the barracks. This led the population to be so proutd of their achievement that they all offered some extra in order to celebrate the event.

Ok that is of courser total nonsense for logics but in a game where economies are represented by . and it does not require some mental acrobatics to assume that the economy will have you scratching your head on occasion.

 

[mi6agent]

so now the best city spot is 20 plain forest ? haha

 

[Shurdus]

so now the best city spot is 20 plain forest ? haha

Ok this is the level of stupidity where I refuse to argue any further. I said no such thing, and if you can point out where I said this then maybe I am willing to elaborate on it. You are just reading whatever you want to read in between the lines and forego everything that is actually said.

Since this is a forum I will have to explicitly say what it is I want to say. Therefore the things I write down represent my opinion. The things that you make from them are not my opinion. What you are saying is therefore irrelevant, not what I said at all and basically stupid, pardon me saying so. If you will stick to the subject please and not retreat into lalaland where you put words into our mouths I would be very grateful.

 

[mi6agent]

what is the best economy ? CE , SE , HE , WE . Finallly we have an answer : It's a T E , beat that !

 

[Shurdus]

mi6agent, meet ignore list. Ignore list, this is mi6agent.

I am sure you two will get along just fine.

 

[mi6agent]

no Shurdus, I'm just little over the top because I've just realize the power of a 'TE' . And yes my bad, the best city should be 19 plain forest and 1 grassland pigs

 

[Dirk1302]

I feel some of the people who are arguing so vehemently against this technique may have insufficient grasp of other civ techniques to prevent economy crashing. This one is indeed simple to learn and doesn't involve so much timing, gains are instant. So for them it may seem to be a gamebreaking exploit.

I don't think it's it's very important if it's exploitive or not since we all attach rather different meanings to the word. I don't think it's gamebreaking which is imo far more important. You pay the price for chopping these forests, there are other (often better) means to rex and get healthy financially by 1 ad.

 

[mi6agent]

Dont call other people noob because they dont cheat (like some of you)
I play this game since the game release . Have an easy time on Imm but can't not do well at Diety yes. Maybe i am not a cheater ?
one of the great feeling of this game is recover after your economy crash after rex. if you prefer having 15 city in 1 ad and still tech decently, then perhaps just drop to Settler , why die trying play Diety when you are not capable of it without this extreme exploit ?

 

[Elenhil]

My 2 cents on whether chopping wood and whipping population resulting in money is realistic (historical) or not. Soviet Russia covered its enormous deficit this way - except that it wasn't 'hammer overflow', of course - it was export of slave-labour-extracted natural resources. The results, however, are essentially similar.

 

[Shurdus]

My 2 cents on whether chopping wood and whipping population resulting in money is realistic (historical) or not. Soviet Russia covered its enormous deficit this way - except that it wasn't 'hammer overflow', of course - it was export of slave-labour-extracted natural resources. The results, however, are essentially similar.

But the russians made money exporting products you say. How is that similar to getting gold from chopped forrests?

 

[Dirk1302]

Dont call other people noob because they dont cheat (like some of you)
I play this game since the game release . Have an easy time on Imm but can't not do well at Diety yes. Maybe i am not a cheater ?
one of the great feeling of this game is recover after your economy crash after rex. if you prefer having 15 city in 1 ad and still tech decently, then perhaps just drop to Settler , why die trying play Diety when you are not capable of it without this extreme exploit ?

I have never used this technique and i play deity where it's not possible to have 15 cities 1ad anyway.Try to read what others write before lashing out.

 

[oyzar]

I have never used this technique and i play deity where it's not possible to have 15 cities 1ad anyway.Try to read what others write before lashing out.

Clearly you have not played marathon with an abusive leader .
But yes your point is still valid. In normal random leader(or such) games you don't have to use this specific exploit to win (though it is pretty though to win without using any exploits, exploits is defined as behaviour not intended by the game designers. They did design the AI to stuck up in their cities so that is not an exploit, however letting them capture a city and then demolishing their stack with CR troops could be thought of as one for example).

Exploits are varying degrees of strength. Some might feel uncomfortable using some but not others. At any rate you should play in a way that makes the game most fun for you. If that means exploiting the game engine as far as it goes so be it. I tend to play more MP than SP. There agreeing on what exploits should and shouldn't be allowed before the game stats can increase the enjoyment of the game quite a bit.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Dont call other people noob because they dont cheat (like some of you)
I play this game since the game release . Have an easy time on Imm but can't not do well at Diety yes. Maybe i am not a cheater ?
one of the great feeling of this game is recover after your economy crash after rex. if you prefer having 15 city in 1 ad and still tech decently, then perhaps just drop to Settler , why die trying play Diety when you are not capable of it without this extreme exploit ?

Nobody is going to take your arguments seriously until you stop spouting flagrant nonsense. It's far beyond debate that the tactic in question isn't cheating, and yet you insist on going there and telling the deity player that his application of cost/benefit on the tactic to show its balance that he is cheating.

If you think this tactic is cheating, I strongly suggest you refer to the closest dictionary you have at hand, read the definition carefully, as many times as it takes, and then check back here.

 

[Dirk1302]

@Oyzar, I guess you mean romans (or maybe incas?) on marathon, it should be possible to get at 15 cities 1ad if the circumstances are right. Indeed never tried it. Agree with the rest of your post.

I think it's possible to win without outright exploits but maybe without knowing i use some tactics that are considered exploitive. I admit for instance that i've used that city bait then move in with cr troops trick on some occassions (not often) where the enemy was stronger than expected, this one is pretty exploitive imo more so than the overflow trick discussed here.

I remember writing a deity walkthrough here where i blocked of a hugh stake of land with one band of 5 cities exploiting the fact that ais are programmed not to go through borders when expanding. DanF asked me if he thought this was an exploit, i answered no since deity is though anyway but apart from deity being difficult i now feel the way i blocked of so much land there is an exploit of the ai. Designers put in this ai rule since there were complaints about ais settling in illogical and annoying places, on that particular map i really abused that rule.

Giving 30 gold to a newly met ai to get +4 fair trade is also considered an exploit by some. Don't think so here because the +4 wears of pretty fast. But is is really good since you can do some useful things with the ai in this timespan which you couldn't do without the gift.

 

[Shurdus]

Nobody is going to take your arguments seriously until you stop spouting flagrant nonsense. It's far beyond debate that the tactic in question isn't cheating, and yet you insist on going there and telling the deity player that his application of cost/benefit on the tactic to show its balance that he is cheating.

If you think this tactic is cheating, I strongly suggest you refer to the closest dictionary you have at hand, read the definition carefully, as many times as it takes, and then check back here.

Your grasp of the English language is far, far better than that of mi6agent so he could not possibly win any argument anyway.

You language cheat!

 

[Crusher1]

This one is indeed simple to learn and doesn't involve so much timing, gains are instant.

In order to waste the fewest amount of worker turns and power tech in coordination with new cities and when those cities will reach 2 pop for proper execution of chops "timing" and proper "transitioning" are very important.

Expert players will pull this off with greater ease and thus have much more success when using it. Players lacking skill or basic fundamentals will have a very hard time and are more apt to dislike the technique because they don't achieve the same results.

I have never used this technique

You seem to have suggested in some of your previous post that you don't think the technique is actually that useful. Seems a bit odd considering the above quote.

on marathon, it should be possible to get at 15 cities 1ad if the circumstances are right. Indeed never tried it.

Quite a bit more than that actually! I have peacefully REXed 15 cities by 1000 BCish on Marathon before with the help of Overflow.


I guess I'm just a bit surprised still that some players have no love for the technique at all. I'm not talking out of my a$$ at all. I really have spent 100s of hours REXing thru 1AD w/ and w/out the technique on the same map (comparison point being 1AD) and then repeating and in virtually every scenario whip/chopping has come out ahead.

Even in the slim cases when each technique (overflow vs no overflow) attained the same amount of cities by 1AD, the whip/chop technique was still teching faster and working more tiles (founded cities earlier).

I just read another thread about something like Monarchy CRE abuse and saw some guy write a response to Unconquered Suns response about CRE/Overflow telling him that is a poor choice and doesn't work well. Seriously, what are people smoking, lol.

Can myself and others win w/out overflow? Of course. I'm not a consistant Deity player by any means, however, I can win pretty much at will on Immortal with random leaders and never use Overflow. Of course, I could always use Overflow and have a stronger game!

 

[popejubal]

Your grasp of the English language is far, far better than that of mi6agent so he could not possibly win any argument anyway.

You language cheat!

Yes, having a strong grasp of the English language when having an internet discussion/argument in English is strong, but not throwing childish tantrums is superior!

 

[Crusher1]

@ Pope

You have to make it entertaining!

Voice said it best:

the topic is only worth pursuing as far as it is itself entertaining.

Besides, its pretty clear who has put time and effort by trial and error to unveil the said techniques actual strength. Some people continue saying its bad when my personal tests have proven quite the contrary. Game theory in a forum is one thing but results dont lie.

 

[Dirk1302]

^
-Never used the technique but from your link which i read it's pretty clear how it'll work out. I have not denied in my previous posts that i think the trick is useful, maybe you confuse my posts with Duckweed's who's more skeptical of it. I don't think it's gamebreaking but i'm going to use it myself to get from math to currency after beelining math if i have the right leader for it. I think it's there that you gain most from this technique.

- Did you rex to 15 cities on deity 1000 bc? In Usun's dual deity game it was possible to do that in the gilga game but that's surely an exception. Other ais, not maintenance tend to be the limiting factors there.

It's important to realize that the game doesn't stop 1 ad, having good research then but not much forests left and maybe also unhappy (or worse unhealthy) cities isn't necessarily better than getting that good research a few hundred years later with most of the forest potential intact. Chopping some wonders has always been a good alternative for this technique as well.It depends to use a horrible cliche.

 

[Crusher1]

I play mostly Emperor-Immortal games these days Dirk - below my skill but much funner! I only win Deity about 20% of the time and even when I do win I don't enjoy it lol. As you know Deity AIs tech much faster and always have money so the technique in discussion is less powerful there. It is very powerful on less difficult levels where trade suffers from slow/broke AIs.

Besides, Deity really is a roll of the dice and many games cannot be won regardless. When I do get a good leader with a strong starting position AND don't have crazy neighbors a win is almost always manageable.

The REXing to 15 cities around 1000 BC was with Cathy, Marathon, 400+ gold from huts, and a sick starting position, with a big need for more workers! I think I had 9 cities at 1700 BC that game.

I don't worry about the health when I use that strat. I simply settle lots of cities and get more health resources and trade for the rest - besides, with lots of food it matters even less. Save trees in cities you plan to make the wonder in, simple enough. Plus you won't have better research a few hundred years later - well, ok, you will, but it won't be higher than the guy who chopped away in most cases because once again, you get a greater number of cities and are working a lot more tiles that same few hundred years later.