Is Whip/Chop overflow an Exploit? I say No

[Monsterzuma]

So... what are the exchange rates of hammer to gold for this...? 1 to 2 for the regular ones and 1 to 3 for the protective stone walls or something?

 

[Crusher1]

I would not call this trick superior.

1. It gives you best gains after Math and at that time Currency is one tech away or you have currency already. A few hundred gold from forests is not that important since you are able to gain gold from AIs to support your research then.

2. Stone is rare.

3. While you gain cash, you delay some useful buildings.

4. you lose worker turns

5. It's tedious and give you little gain for above reasons.

1. False. In my signature is a simple example of chop/whipping well before Math taking my research from 120 turns to 4 turns. A sick and overpowering amount of turns is saved with this superior technique. Learn it. Live it or go home .
2. Who's talking about stone?
3. You don't delay useful buildings at all. After all, Granaries, Libraries, and Barracks will eventually be needed.
4. You will be reach your happy cap very early regardless so you need to be doing something with your workers. EXP leaders more than make up for this with cheaper workers in the 1st place.
5. It's supremely superior and always allows for the fastest Expansion and tech rate.


Amazingly wrong. It is Supremely Superior, unless of course you are simply talking about Stone/Protective, which I am not.

@ Monster

Yes. The advantage is gives to the early game is overwhelming on every level except Deity (and even then it is powerful pre Currency) where AIs have lots of cash for trade, whereas lower levels don't usually have enough to make trading techs for cash worthwhile. The ability to maintain 100% deficit research is by far and way the most powerful strategy available, and whip/chopping achieves this for you.

It cannot even be debated. It's a simple fact. Anyone stating otherwise is smoking crack and foaming at the mouth in denial verging on cluelessness.

I'm always surprised when I see "skilled" players make such grossly inaccurate statements.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Define: exploit

My usual answers are

• Using a code bug to improve your chances (ex: the old axeman 60 exploit)
• Using a designed handicap to improve your chances (ex: various early rushes, worker theft)
• Using a design oversite to improve your chances (ex: protective wall overflow synergy).

That said, so what? Play the way that's fun.

 

[Duckweed]

Man, you're the only player I've found so far who are soooo confident on own opinions.

1. False. In my signature is a simple example of chop/whipping well before Math taking my research from 120 turns to 4 turns. A sick and overpowering amount of turns is saved with this superior technique. Learn it. Live it or go home .

Huh, you're so generous to waste the 50% gain from forest chop before Math! 120 turns to 4 turns, another joke. Why do you want to rex to extreme and have to rely on a few hundred cash before Alpha and Currency? Man, it's all about how do you play the game. There are many other play styles for a healthy empire other than extreme rexing. Learn to try others before you negate them.

2. Who's talking about stone?

I mentioned about stone since Stone/Protective/Wall is the best gain for this trick. So if your best application does not make sense, then no need to mention other cases.

3. You don't delay useful buildings at all. After all, Granaries, Libraries, and Barracks will eventually be needed.

How true? there's only one or two choices for one trait, if you chop for wall, why did you think you didn't delay Monument/Granary/Lib?

4. You will be reach your happy cap very early regardless so you need to be doing something with your workers. EXP leaders more than make up for this with cheaper workers in the 1st place.

Do you know that you pay cash to let workers work for you? and you think they have extra turns for simultaneous chopping. Too many workers then. Of course, this part is the trivial one.

5. It's supremely superior and always allows for the fastest Expansion and tech rate.

Hence, this statement proves nothing.

 

[mboettcher]

This is a powerful strategy with the right leaders. Often (usually even) with the leaders/civs that this synergizes with also happen to benefit most from power REXing. There are many strategies and the leaders for which this isn't effective also happen to be the ones that more often than not benefit from more vertical growth early than horizontal and a later grab for power (or some other victory goal in mind).

 

[mboettcher]

IND can also make use of this strat effectively as well in two ways as long as it is paired with one of the more primary traits for this- exp, cre, agg. You beeline math and the prereqs for the cheap buildings. Then you use the first chop/whip series to get the gold to tech out MC. Then you repeat once or twice with forges.

 

[mboettcher]

The advantage of such a pairing is the multiplier of forges applies after they are built as well as when they are built. This allows three different whips per city (at least). These combos also provides the useful early buildings for a decent sized whip based-empire. It opens up the possibility for Collossus etc. Everybody has seen this path b4.

 

[Syiss_]

I define 'exploit' as using a game mechanic in a way that it was not intended to achieve an advantage that couldn't otherwise be realized. I don't believe the developers implemented chop/whip overflow with the intention of players using trait bonuses, multipliers, and extreme worker micro-management to gain massive amounts of gold that is otherwise unattainable in any other fashion. I believe chop/whip overflow was implemented so that people wouldn't have to worry about wasting production because their chop finished when the building only needed 10 hammers, not 20.

I'm not here to judge anyone who uses these methods, do whatever is fun for you. But until I see a developer comment that indicates that this was an intended use of this mechanic, it remains an exploit to me. I'm not a professional programmer, but I'm fairly sure that if this was something the developers foresaw as a tactic to be used, they could have programmed the AI to take advantage of it pretty efficiently.

 

[Norzin]

Crusher

i've won a few immortal games and am pretty comfortable at emperor but i still find myself having problems expanding well. anyways i've read a lot of your post and links about getting gold from overflow and i'm really surprised. i can normally expand to about 6 or 7 cities by ad250 on emperor and thought i was doing pretty good. after using your suggestions in a few games i have been able to get repeatable results in the range of 9 to 12 cities before ad1 while researching faster than i ever thought possible.

why dont more people know about this? wow! thank you!

 

[DigitalBoy]

Define: exploit

I'll make a feeble attempt to define it:

An exploit, as it refers to games, is using a game mechanic or something otherwise in the game in a way it wasn't intended to be used by the game developers, usually to secure some sort of unfair advantage that wouldn't ordinarily be available.

A good example of an exploit is glitching inside of buildings in first person shooters like the Battlefield series; such an exploit would let you shoot at people from the inside (the walls of the building appear transparent when you glitch into them) without people outside being able to kill you. It's not hacking because no outside software is used; what makes it an exploit is that what enables it is a fault in the game engine that allows you to get inside.

Exploit can also be used more loosely to describe abusing a game mechanic in a game, in which case, it's much more subjective and open to interpretation about what's fair play.

 

[Kaosprophet]

My usual answers are

• Using a code bug to improve your chances (ex: the old axeman 60 exploit)
• Using a designed handicap to improve your chances (ex: various early rushes, worker theft)
• Using a design oversite to improve your chances (ex: protective wall overflow synergy).

That said, so what? Play the way that's fun.

This pretty much sums up my feelings on the matter - though I'd add something about it being deliberate in there somehow, and note that the question of whether or not the gain is meaningful or trivial has no bearing on whether something qualifies as an 'exploit' or not.

No, it's really not all that good - essentially you're turning your forests into gold instead of other uses.

You may be underestimating the value of (properly leveraged) gold in the game.

At it's most efficient it's just slightly better than losing a bid for a wonder

At it's most efficient, it's like losing a bid for a wonder when you're industrious & have the resource assist. Excepting that it exchanges the 'risk' of getting the wonder when you needed the gold more for the opportunity-cost of having certainly built a building you may not need yet (if ever.)

Noting that, as Crusher said, it can be done with more than just protective+walls. Creative libraries, organized courthouses, expansive granaries; the pro-wall is just the most hand-wrung version.

- and it's not at the most efficient earlier in the game, since you want granaries for whipping and math for chopping. Not that it's not useful on certain settings/against the AI in some cases but a lot of times you're just as well off putting your worker turns and forests into something more useful (for instance, a courthouse which will save you plenty of gold after a while, rather than a building like walls you wouldn't need).

Again noting that Crusher does not limit this trick to *just* protective walls...

Say a courthouse saves me 4 gpt in a city. Also say I'm organized (I believe that's the trait that gets a bonus building courthouses.)

I have a choice: I can chop/whip to get the courthouse built in 2 turns. Or I can wait 6 turns for it to hit the 'max whipped overflow' threshold, and *then* chop/whip to get overflow gold.

If, according to the criteria set up here, I can get more than 16 gold out of the overflow (the 4 gpt that the courthouse saves me, times the number of turns I delay the courthouse in order to exploit overflow) using the same number of forests, worker-turns and pop that I'd use rushbuilding the courthouse, then I'm obviously better off going for the overflow instead of an earlier courthouse. If the overflow I can get is less than 16 gold, overflowing it is a losing proposition. If breaking the 16 gold threshold requires more forests/population/workerturns, then it's a question of whether those additional resources are worth the gold garnered for using them in this way.

I don't have actual in-game numbers to say for sure if it's plausible that I'll get better ROI overflowing (with same resources) than rushbuilding in this case - and it's obviously more complicated if we're talking about other buildings or applying additional resources on top.

 

[Crusher1]

Long post!

Spoiler :

Huh, you're so generous to waste the 50% gain from forest chop before Math! 120 turns to 4 turns, another joke. Why do you want to rex to extreme and have to rely on a few hundred cash before Alpha and Currency? Man, it's all about how do you play the game. There are many other play styles for a healthy empire other than extreme rexing. Learn to try others before you negate them.

If you don't make a few whip/chops before Math your research can end up stagnate. If your research isn't stagnate then you haven't REXd hard enough. If you limit yourself to waiting for Math (EXP, CRE tech path almost always gets Math in time) the other guy who has been whipping/chopping will have more cities and thus be working many more tiles before you.

There are plenty of games where I never use overflow - usually because the leaders lack the ability ^^. However, I haven't always had this "addiction" to this strategy. I spend most of my gaming time executing build orders and expanding via peace/conquest through 1 ADish and in every game where there are trees available I always have much greater success than w/out.

Are there other strategies? Of course they are but that doesn't make them a better choice.

Screen shots of 193 turns at zero slider followed by 5 turns at 100%:

Spoiler :

I mentioned about stone since Stone/Protective/Wall is the best gain for this trick. So if your best application does not make sense, then no need to mention other cases.

Stone is actually inferior and is no way shape or form the best application "while you are teching towards math". The reason is obvious. It takes much longer to actually discover Math and then you are left with a rather useless building.

This is fun isn't it?

How true? there's only one or two choices for one trait, if you chop for wall, why did you think you didn't delay Monument/Granary/Lib?

I'm talking about CRE/EXP/AGG.

Do you know that you pay cash to let workers work for you? and you think they have extra turns for simultaneous chopping. Too many workers then. Of course, this part is the trivial one.

I'm really dumbfounded why you are so against it? I'm guessing you don't like my "tone" and presentation. Don't let your dislike for my attitude take away from the true strength of a strategy. Chopping lets you get to Math and Currency a lot faster which provides better overflow followed by earlier +1 trade routes and the ability to build and sell techs for cash which then further broadens the gap from research at that point forward as well.

You do waste some worker turns, no doubt about it. However, you DO EXPAND faster and tech faster which means you will have more cites, more tiles, and reach happiness techs/ability to trade faster too.

Hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm? Waste a few worker turns when I will be stuck at an early happy cap or get more cities, work more tiles, and tech faster so my vertical growth starts sooner? I know which one I choose .

Hence, this statement proves nothing.

Obviously we strongly disagree, but, I think I have made a much stronger case than you have - not to mention my personal gaming experience confirms it.


EDIT:

There is no doubt in my mind you are a superior player than me, however, that doesn't mean my point is invalid. I've actually been slowly upping my winning % on Deity w/ this method (Immortal is almost a gimme regardles, much like Deity is for you, although as I have said before, even when I win I don't really enjoy Deity - I prefer to stomp the AI silly.).

Actually, I really love beating up on easy levels, lol. This is kinda on topic...............

In this game here With an Abusive Leader on Emperor:

Spoiler :

I used about the worst possible whip/chop combination you can, Immortals - mostly to pay for unit maintenance pre 1 AD. I probably made 15-20 chops w/ overflow going into an Immortal of course. If I didn't whip/chop for gold overflow there is no way I could have sustained so many units, even with conquested gold.

To each there own I guess =-D

 

[Earthling]

If you don't make a few whip/chops before Math your research can end up stagnate. If your research isn't stagnate then you haven't REXd hard enough. If you limit yourself to waiting for Math (EXP, CRE tech path almost always gets Math in time) the other guy who has been whipping/chopping will have more cities and thus be working many more tiles before you. the other guy will have 20 keshik and raze your sorry cities

Glad to clear up this misconception. Don't pretend this isn't doesn't do anything other than help you exploit AI tech/expansion weaknesses. It's not an "ideal" strategy - in fact, someone who just always plays Rome is better off in that regard.

There are plenty of games where I never use overflow - usually because the leaders lack the ability ^^.

If there's any one point I'm trying to make clear it's actually this - for the leaders that can do this well, yes it's useful. BUT, I'd rather have a better leader than rely on this to carry my game. Can't see this saving Toku even when he can chop walls/barracks.

Stone is actually inferior and is no way shape or form the best application "while you are teching towards math". The reason is obvious. It takes much longer to actually discover Math and then you are left with a rather useless building.

No, stone with protective walls is definitely the best use of this exploit, you're not lending much credence to your own argument here. Getting 3 gold to 1 is much, much better than 2 to 1. For instance, a Creative library will take 3+ forest chops to pay off as much as 2 from a Pro/stone wall. Again, it's not that this can't be used with other traits, but then it doesn't pay more than just putting the hammers into an unbuilt wonder you have the bonus to. So first you have the concern of simply less payoff for all the chopping, and then you have to weigh immediate payout against waste of forests and worker time, and potentially chopping the wrong forests (since with an unbuilt wonder you can do it at any city).

I'm really dumbfounded why you are so against it? I'm guessing you don't like my "tone" and presentation. Don't let your dislike for my attitude take away from the true strength of a strategy. Chopping lets you get to Math and Currency a lot faster which provides better overflow followed by earlier +1 trade routes and the ability to build and sell techs for cash which then further broadens the gap from research at that point forward as well.

To be clear, I'm not against it, Duckweed will have to speak for himself. I've regularly used things like chops onto Maoi Statues in a bunch of cities or overflow on the late game. I'm just not all convinced this holistic "strategy" is better in the majority of circumstances - for a few civs, it's better than nothing, (I would rank barracks second to walls for this trick, it is true it can pay for a conquering civ like Zulu, but no more than other war-related "exploits"). But for most civs, at least half the traits without cheap early buildings, it's not worth it (for instance you'd have to chop 4+ forests on a courthouse because the first one won't turn entirely to gold. That's a lot of worker action and it requires a lot of forests).

You do waste some worker turns, no doubt about it. However, you DO EXPAND faster and tech faster which means you will have more cites, more tiles, and reach happiness techs/ability to trade faster too.

Yes, I don't dispute that you expand faster as it is a REX. But it hardly seems like you would tech faster, that's just a fact of most REX. If the land is open and there's no hurry to expand it's often more optimal to get tech/wonders before outsettling your ability to support yourself. On the other hand, if the map is already crowded then you'd be much better off investing in military than settling cities to get one building in them. I bet if you posted a start on the forum players could be ahead in tech and production without the REX because that's just the nature of it.

If, according to the criteria set up here, I can get more than 16 gold out of the overflow (the 4 gpt that the courthouse saves me, times the number of turns I delay the courthouse in order to exploit overflow) using the same number of forests, worker-turns and pop that I'd use rushbuilding the courthouse, then I'm obviously better off going for the overflow instead of an earlier courthouse. If the overflow I can get is less than 16 gold, overflowing it is a losing proposition. If breaking the 16 gold threshold requires more forests/population/workerturns, then it's a question of whether those additional resources are worth the gold garnered for using them in this way.

Well, of course you get more gold with overflow. That's obvious. But the problem is, you've also chopped a bunch more forests that can't go into anything else - so you have a new city with a courthouse, but no granary, monument, etc... And your workers have been busy here instead of elsewhere. The trick really is best with Pro/stone because you get 3 gold to 1 rather than 2, and most other buildings aren't as cheap so they require more chops just to get to overflow in the first place.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

My usual answers are

• Using a code bug to improve your chances (ex: the old axeman 60 exploit)
• Using a designed handicap to improve your chances (ex: various early rushes, worker theft)
• Using a design oversite to improve your chances (ex: protective wall overflow synergy).

That said, so what? Play the way that's fun.

The problem with "using design oversights" as a definition of exploits is that playing the AI at all essentially becomes an exploit .

Is whipchop overpowering? I'm with earthling on this - give me FIN, ORG, IMP or PHI and I won't shed tears over not having it, especially with combinations of the two! It can seemingly make up partially for weak leaders, assuming you want to invest enough simultaneous worker turns in one spot. It makes sense if you need the money to quickly power to a tech or two, after that it starts to lose its appeal rapidly.

As for other things that are design oversights: any war, trades, beeline tech paths (especially bulbing liberalism!), bribing AIs to wars that screw them, gifting AIs nukes, and so on.

Now, as per one of the definitions of exploit, virtually everything we do in civ could be construed as an exploit if it's good play . So I don't have a problem with "exploits" unless they turn into some kind of unbalancing factor.

It's interesting though. The only people you see complaining that these tactics are "unfair" or "exploitative" just based on the perception of being cheap are lower-level players. The players who are better than me either use this, accurately evaluate when it is or isn't stronger than standard play, or if they're really good like USun avoid it not because it's cheap, but just for added challenge .

 

[Crusher1]

No, stone with protective walls is definitely the best use of this exploit, you're not lending much credence to your own argument here

I'm not selling myself short at all. My argument is not even an argument in my eyes, it's fact. But anyways, you need to keep in mind you have to research an extra tech and you wind up delaying math and currency. Then you have to contend with a wall and still need other buildings. If it was a library you could also immediately run 2 scientist, which when combined with deficit research and quicker to Currency becomes much more valuable.

The timing and transitioning with protective is problematic and not my 1st choice.

Yes, I don't dispute that you expand faster as it is a REX. But it hardly seems like you would tech faster, that's just a fact of most REX. If the land is open and there's no hurry to expand it's often more optimal to get tech/wonders before outsettling your ability to support yourself. On the other hand, if the map is already crowded then you'd be much better off investing in military than settling cities to get one building in them. I bet if you posted a start on the forum players could be ahead in tech and production without the REX because that's just the nature of it.

You're making it seem complicated. It's quite simplistic. Chopping gives you a nice sum of gold for a loss of population, loss of trees, and a loss of worker turns. If you don't chop you won't have enough gold to maintain 100% research.

Someone at 100% slider techs faster for some random amount of time, after which, the transition to vertical accompanied by their massive REX pulls way ahead. Teching faster gets you more cash on your chops and lands you at Currency quicker. The faster your cities are settled the more tiles you work. The more tiles you work the stronger your empire is.

Seriously, why limit the rate and speed of your expansion? The sooner you get those cities started the better and with whip/chopping you can really abuse expansion via peace/conquest. A massive horizontal is almost always superior to a mild expansion with quicker vertical growth.

Once again, in this game that I posted above, I really leveraged whip/chop even w/ out a modifying trait:

Spoiler :

Gotta love Abusive Leaders on easy levels (Emperor)!

 

[Crusher1]

Crusher

i've won a few immortal games and am pretty comfortable at emperor but i still find myself having problems expanding well. anyways i've read a lot of your post and links about getting gold from overflow and i'm really surprised. i can normally expand to about 6 or 7 cities by ad250 on emperor and thought i was doing pretty good. after using your suggestions in a few games i have been able to get repeatable results in the range of 9 to 12 cities before ad1 while researching faster than i ever thought possible.

why dont more people know about this? wow! thank you!

You are very welcome and I'm glad to have helped. Lot's of people do know about it, but IMO, they just don't know how to properly utilize it otherwise they would like it more =D. After all, results speak for themselves!

 

[mi6agent]

it's an exploit 100% . That Crusher guy is so greedy . Wanna REX and still 100% research at Imm/Diety ? I lolz . If you do that by this way of cheating , good for you but dont waste time and effort to convince other people that it is not, because again it is .

 

[TheMeInTeam]

it's an exploit 100% . That Crusher guy is so greedy . Wanna REX and still 100% research at Imm/Diety ? I lolz . If you do that by this way of cheating , good for you but dont waste time and effort to convince other people that it is not, because again it is .

Who gave you the keycard of "opinion is always correct"? If you're going to state a case, at least attempt to back it up!

 

[Crusher1]

I voted Exploit too as are many other features in the game, however, it is certainly not cheating. I don't consider it a waste of time to help people who want to learn how to improve their game.

 

[Crusher1]

Who gave you the keycard of "opinion is always correct"? If you're going to state a case, at least attempt to back it up!

Go easy on him! I like the attitude! After all, if you don't believe in what you're saying and your not willing to fight and defend your words to the death then you might as well shut the F up ^^.