JujuLautre
Deity
Btw TMIT, you wanted a reason, I gave you one (inconsistency); will you acknowledge that? 
Is Whip/Chop overflow an Exploit? I say No
- Thread starter mboettcher
- Start date
Dirk1302
Deity
@Crusher, i agree that the overflow technique will have a bigger impact below deity for the reasons you stated. I wonder how it'll be in the immortal AW SG game we're going to play. We're probably playing Gilga and we'll need walls. The chop overflow technique might be very strong there as the slider's often low in these sort of games. We may have to make a decision about this in that game.
Regarding what's possible on Deity with regard to expansion:
Sky is the limit if an early war actually pays off big. My personal best for a peaceful game was 17 cities at 1 AD, on Normal speed. This was with Joao, an excellent production capital and quite a few easily-accessible islands. I also gambled and won (built the GLH to pay the bills, which finished at a decidedly unsafe date).
Deity games are highly random though... it's pretty much the only level on which I don't shoot for a dozen cities in the BCs because sometimes that would be too much of a risk / take too many concessions elsewhere.
Testing strategies for that is something I find very hard because often it becomes 'look for something you can break' rather than 'flawlessly execute predecided strategy x'.
Sky is the limit if an early war actually pays off big. My personal best for a peaceful game was 17 cities at 1 AD, on Normal speed. This was with Joao, an excellent production capital and quite a few easily-accessible islands. I also gambled and won (built the GLH to pay the bills, which finished at a decidedly unsafe date).
Deity games are highly random though... it's pretty much the only level on which I don't shoot for a dozen cities in the BCs because sometimes that would be too much of a risk / take too many concessions elsewhere.
Testing strategies for that is something I find very hard because often it becomes 'look for something you can break' rather than 'flawlessly execute predecided strategy x'.
TheMeInTeam
If A implies B...
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Btw TMIT, you wanted a reason, I gave you one (inconsistency); will you acknowledge that?
Yes I will.
I'll just add it to the laundry list of inconsistencies then
.It is merely a question of simulation/realism. Obviously CIV has a massively simplified economic model, and wood is not a directly exportable resource, neither are resources discrete and thus 'sellable' for money per some quantity (as there is none). So all we have are various simplifications and shortcomings which give results appoximately similar to real-life mechanisms they simulate. It is the results that matter, and they are essentially similar - people and trees converted into 'hammers' and 'gold'.
If people can simulate ruthless exploitation of population and natural resources to boost their industry and economy (and keep population figures under controllable cap), I say it simulates bloody Soviets' state machinery pretty well. If it takes building a 'project' - well, so much the closer to Soviet reality with its 5-year plans to be done in 4 years. If it does not actually involve negotiating with another party - well, that just one of the shortcomings and simplifications. Like trading only complete resources.
mboettcher
General
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This I completely disagree with. This is an acceptable tactic that makes the most efficient use of the given military situation. You have to build troops. If you happen to have upgraded them with CR and a war comes with an SOD that you can't win in a field then fighting city warfare is perfectly acceptable. A city gets really trashed in this method btw and is really last resort since its likely that you lost a good chunk of gold and infrastructure in the city that has to be rebuilt (probably w/o the forests that were chopped to make the city useful).
The AI is always militarily inept. That's a big reason why it has such an economic advantage. Part of winning the game is using your resources more effectively and efficiently than the AI. This tactic is also acceptable against Human opponents as well. Both human, and AI, should take into account that there exist such promotions as CR and that when you plop 'all your eggs in one city' then you are taking the risk of succumbing to the pitfalls of this promotion. This is especially relevant when power ratings, spies and other mechanics exist tog et a good read on your opponent's war capacity (and the AI does weigh these considerations when preparing/declaring war as we know). Attacking an opponent with 10 unpromoted axes and swords and sitting in a city with a SOD is asking to lose troops to a counter attack (in fact isn't counter attacking fundamental to warfare in general?)
Granted Crusher1 is getting a little vehement about the whole argument but he is somewhat right when it comes to saying that going to war against the AI is exploitive if this is what we mean by that. We are exploiting weakness' in the AI. But that's part of the game to do so.
mboettcher
General
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Another thing about protective. It is considered a weak trait. I agree to a degree as often it is paired with 'stronger' traits and synergistic situations so as to maximize the archer/gunpowder promo's (i.e Sitting Bull and TP's, Toku and Agg, China and the CKN, Church and RC etc.). Yes its a little weak but not only can it be used for absorbing the enemy's main thrust b4 an attack but it is probably 'supposed' to be used this way. Declare war on the AI, let them waste their advantage breaking their SOD against a fortified hill, XBOW/Longbow defense then counter attack. Every taken city the AI will counter attack and lose many units to your CG defenders. The point of Prot is to have a main body foot soldier army that is very hard to counter attack.
BTW if they want to make good warfare simulation in Civilization then they should abandon the whole unit concept and move towards an army concept. War simulation games are a perfect example of well balanced strategic war. The Total War series is a great example (especially in the later games for strategic level warfare) but the best war simulator is Hearts of Iron II. If you think the mechanics of war in Civ IV are illogical then play these games. Maybe Civ V will adopt some of these concepts (supply lines, armies, force multipliers, leadership etc). But until then we gotta slog through the ultimately broken siege weapon concept among other things.
BTW if they want to make good warfare simulation in Civilization then they should abandon the whole unit concept and move towards an army concept. War simulation games are a perfect example of well balanced strategic war. The Total War series is a great example (especially in the later games for strategic level warfare) but the best war simulator is Hearts of Iron II. If you think the mechanics of war in Civ IV are illogical then play these games. Maybe Civ V will adopt some of these concepts (supply lines, armies, force multipliers, leadership etc). But until then we gotta slog through the ultimately broken siege weapon concept among other things.
Dirk1302
Deity
^Good points, protective is very good in situations where you're on defense. Trapping strong ais to attack you and suicide on superior protective defense is a strong tactic on high levels too, sometimes subsequent war/conquest can be a cakewalk.
Okay TMIT (man, that always makes me think of teenage mutant ninja turtles), I will spare you the rebuttal I had to your comments since I left the office yesterday without finishing all of them. 
But I also will not post them because last night I actually tested out this tactic so I can judge it myself. (I feel a lot of times people on these boards just talk out of their butt and theorize for the sake of debate, instead of actually having personal experience - which I can be guilty of sometimes too
.)
I have to admit, after testing it out, I was a bit underwhelmed.
I set up a scenario with a protective leader, normal speed, all ancient era techs, 4 pop city, access to stone, a wall at 48/50 hammers with 1 more turn of production left, 3 workers waiting to chop down a forest in 1 turn, and under slavery.
I proceeded to whip the wall, and then made each of 3 workers chop down their forest tiles. I gained a little over 100 gold. Ummm... huh? Wait a sec... this doesn't seem like the effect I was expecting!
I don't know if I performed it correctly, or if things have been altered since the original article, but I wasn't seeing the 600+ gold that Vale described (with only 2 workers too).
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=218272
Perhaps I also needed Mathematics for more potent chops.
[EDIT: ah... his tests were performed on Marathon speed... yuck]
I was under the assumption that the amount of gold obtained thru this unorthodox tactic was both significant AND early. I thought it was cheesy, which is why I never even bothered to test it out.
Honestly,
)) I doesn't really seem that game-breaking. I had to invest a citizen and 3 forests (along with tedious planning) for that amount of gold. I would of rather put that raw production toward military or infrastructure that early in the game... or even a wonder.
The debate though was enjoyable to read. For those that are still debating the issue: Have you actually tried doing it yourself within a game? My personal results were rather disappointing and don't seem game-breaking. If I'm playing against someone who employs this tactic, I don't think I'd really care much.
An investment is still being made for that gold (time, forests, citizens, and worker actions) - it doesn't come too easily and in great portions. It also seems like you would need lots of forested area to continue producing incremental gains to have it significantly affect your finances at these small amounts.
But I also will not post them because last night I actually tested out this tactic so I can judge it myself. (I feel a lot of times people on these boards just talk out of their butt and theorize for the sake of debate, instead of actually having personal experience - which I can be guilty of sometimes too
.)I have to admit, after testing it out, I was a bit underwhelmed.
I set up a scenario with a protective leader, normal speed, all ancient era techs, 4 pop city, access to stone, a wall at 48/50 hammers with 1 more turn of production left, 3 workers waiting to chop down a forest in 1 turn, and under slavery.
I proceeded to whip the wall, and then made each of 3 workers chop down their forest tiles. I gained a little over 100 gold. Ummm... huh? Wait a sec... this doesn't seem like the effect I was expecting!
I don't know if I performed it correctly, or if things have been altered since the original article, but I wasn't seeing the 600+ gold that Vale described (with only 2 workers too).
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=218272
Perhaps I also needed Mathematics for more potent chops.
[EDIT: ah... his tests were performed on Marathon speed... yuck]
I was under the assumption that the amount of gold obtained thru this unorthodox tactic was both significant AND early. I thought it was cheesy, which is why I never even bothered to test it out.
Honestly,
)) I doesn't really seem that game-breaking. I had to invest a citizen and 3 forests (along with tedious planning) for that amount of gold. I would of rather put that raw production toward military or infrastructure that early in the game... or even a wonder.The debate though was enjoyable to read. For those that are still debating the issue: Have you actually tried doing it yourself within a game? My personal results were rather disappointing and don't seem game-breaking. If I'm playing against someone who employs this tactic, I don't think I'd really care much.
An investment is still being made for that gold (time, forests, citizens, and worker actions) - it doesn't come too easily and in great portions. It also seems like you would need lots of forested area to continue producing incremental gains to have it significantly affect your finances at these small amounts.
vale
Mathematician
Something you described in your post is not what happened. I just tested it to make sure and got 233 gold under the conditions you described. There will be slight variations depending on the tiles worked the turn you are completing it but you should always get 200 and change every time with the setup you described.
Are you sure that:
1. Stone was absolutely hooked up? Easiest way is to put it on the center tile of the target city.
2. Leader was protective?
3. You whipped?
4. The forest chops came in time?
If all those are true there is no chance that what you described happened unless you are running some sort of modified base game beyond just the unofficial patches.
To be honest, I can't reconcile your results at all with the mechanic. If the problem was just 1 or 2 you still should have gotten a little over 130 gold. If it was 3 that would have resulted in about 90 gold less than I got so around 140 gold. Anything else or any combination of the above problems would have been significantly worse than 100 gold.
Put me in the exploit camp as even though the conversion mechanic is intended and probably ok, the production bonuses not being factored out was an oversight.
Are you sure that:
1. Stone was absolutely hooked up? Easiest way is to put it on the center tile of the target city.
2. Leader was protective?
3. You whipped?
4. The forest chops came in time?
If all those are true there is no chance that what you described happened unless you are running some sort of modified base game beyond just the unofficial patches.
To be honest, I can't reconcile your results at all with the mechanic. If the problem was just 1 or 2 you still should have gotten a little over 130 gold. If it was 3 that would have resulted in about 90 gold less than I got so around 140 gold. Anything else or any combination of the above problems would have been significantly worse than 100 gold.
Put me in the exploit camp as even though the conversion mechanic is intended and probably ok, the production bonuses not being factored out was an oversight.
Hey there, Vale.
I'm pretty sure stone was hooked up. I checked the city screen also to make sure it was.
I used Charlegmene (protective, imperialistic).
I whipped a population when there was only 1 more turn left for the wall to be complete (at 48 of 50 hammers).
I'm pretty sure the forest chops came in time since i selected them all at the beginning of the last turn and pressed spacebar and made them wait. I then whipped, followed by chopping each forest (total of 3).
Normal speed, standard map.
The only mods I have installed are BetterAI and BUG.
I don't know... I'll have to try it again to see. It was the first time I tried it out.
I'm pretty sure stone was hooked up. I checked the city screen also to make sure it was.
I used Charlegmene (protective, imperialistic).
I whipped a population when there was only 1 more turn left for the wall to be complete (at 48 of 50 hammers).
I'm pretty sure the forest chops came in time since i selected them all at the beginning of the last turn and pressed spacebar and made them wait. I then whipped, followed by chopping each forest (total of 3).
Normal speed, standard map.
The only mods I have installed are BetterAI and BUG.
I don't know... I'll have to try it again to see. It was the first time I tried it out.
popejubal
Emperor
Anybody ever do this with a unit in the Heroic Epic city?
Mostly, I'm thinking that you might be faced with an economic meltdown and notice that you have 4 trees in the Heroic Epic city and a unit that you were going to build anyway. You're not sacrificing any hammers on a "wasted" building because you'll get a unit that you wanted anyway and there's always a need for one more Archer somewhere in your empire (I picked Archer just because it's cheap).
You'll certainly feel some pain from the lost population and the two lost
as well as from the lack of emergency hammers that you could grab at a later date, but that sacrifice might be worthwhile if your need is great enough.
Mostly, I'm thinking that you might be faced with an economic meltdown and notice that you have 4 trees in the Heroic Epic city and a unit that you were going to build anyway. You're not sacrificing any hammers on a "wasted" building because you'll get a unit that you wanted anyway and there's always a need for one more Archer somewhere in your empire (I picked Archer just because it's cheap).
You'll certainly feel some pain from the lost population and the two lost
as well as from the lack of emergency hammers that you could grab at a later date, but that sacrifice might be worthwhile if your need is great enough.
DanF5771
Emperor
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@ Jaroth: Welcome to the "real world" and thank you for using BetterAI which includes the latest version of Dresden's unofficial patch where this bug was fixed -- yes I call it a BUG as it breaks consistency of how the two basic commodities 
and 
are processed (as mentioned by Juju).
I like to push things to the extremes with my examples, so here goes:
Tokugawa, start in future era, marathon speed. Kyoto has HE, IW, Drydocks, Military Academy, Forge, Shale Plant, Factory, Kremlin. Civics are Police State, Bureaucracy, Slavery, State Property, ...
Total Production Modifier for building a Work Boat: 595%
Put 35 (6 base ) into the WB (cost 36 for future start), then whip 1 pop.
Overflow Hammers: 6
Overflow Gold: 796
and are processed (as mentioned by Juju).I like to push things to the extremes with my examples, so here goes:
Tokugawa, start in future era, marathon speed. Kyoto has HE, IW, Drydocks, Military Academy, Forge, Shale Plant, Factory, Kremlin. Civics are Police State, Bureaucracy, Slavery, State Property, ...
Total Production Modifier for building a Work Boat: 595%
Put 35
(6 base ) into the WB (cost 36 for future start), then whip 1 pop.Overflow Hammers: 6
Overflow Gold: 796
vale
Mathematician
Interesting. I may have to pick up that patch. But receiving over 100 gold seems odd to me if the patch completely fixes the oversight.
90 hammers from the whips and chops of which approximately 17 are saved as hammer overflow with the rest being converted to gold should yield around 73 gold I would think.
90 hammers from the whips and chops of which approximately 17 are saved as hammer overflow with the rest being converted to gold should yield around 73 gold I would think.
TheMeInTeam
If A implies B...
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@ Jaroth: Welcome to the "real world" and thank you for using BetterAI which includes the latest version of Dresden's unofficial patch where this bug was fixed -- yes I call it a BUG as it breaks consistency of how the two basic commodities
I like to push things to the extremes with my examples, so here goes:
Tokugawa, start in future era, marathon speed. Kyoto has HE, IW, Drydocks, Military Academy, Forge, Shale Plant, Factory, Kremlin. Civics are Police State, Bureaucracy, Slavery, State Property, ...
Total Production Modifier for building a Work Boat: 595%
Put 35
Overflow Hammers: 6
Overflow Gold: 796
I always thought some of the things added/taken away while others ignored to be a bit of an issue with the unofficial stuff. For example, has BetterAI fixed the "I won't switch to bureaucracy because my favorite civic is caste system" bug yet? That's another example of something that is just as clear an inconsistency...the problem is that the game has a lot of these things and fixing only a few and ignoring the ones that hurt the player seems iffy.
I'd probably use BUG and Better AI at least on occasion though, if they didn't lag me
. It would be REALLY cool if BUG introduced auto-airlifting while waypoints are set!
vale
Mathematician
Can you confirm that you didn't have math when you tried this with that patch earlier? Math would explain getting slightly over 100 gold from overflow if the patch is working correctly. If not there is something funny going on.
It's superior to use official patches and play the game how it was intended to be played. There is no point making changes in the game/new patches based on someone else's presupposition of what's right or wrong, what should be allowed disallowed, how I should play, etc.
r_rolo1
King of myself
With all respect for you, DanF, this:
- That the thing as it is in vanilla BtS is a BUG Debatable, as we can see by the monthly 10-page thread on this subject , but we can acept that point for the time sake
-That Dresden's change is any better than the code in vanilla. THAT is a huge assumption and I expressed my disagreement with that change enough times. IMHO capping the overflow as Dresden did goes against the spirit of the original coder as stated in the vanilla manual ( reducing MM ) because it opens space for more MM ( to avoid losing hammers to thin air , pretty much as it happened in previous version of civ ) and it was most likely because of that reason that Firaxis, in spite of knowing of this issue for quite a while ( atleast since the date of vale's article ) has not touched that part of the code in the expansion and in the 6 patches ( 8, counting with the update to 1.74 and 2.13 with 3.17 ) that were launched from that day on.....
Note, I'm not saying that I agree with the code as it is. I'm just very reticent to the idea of saying that Dresden solution is better than the original code.
implies 2 things:@ Jaroth: Welcome to the "real world" and thank you for using BetterAI which includes the latest version of Dresden's unofficial patch where this bug was fixed -- yes I call it a BUG as it breaks consistency of how the two basic commodities
- That the thing as it is in vanilla BtS is a BUG
Debatable, as we can see by the monthly 10-page thread on this subject , but we can acept that point for the time sake-That Dresden's change is any better than the code in vanilla. THAT is a huge assumption and I expressed my disagreement with that change enough times. IMHO capping the overflow as Dresden did goes against the spirit of the original coder as stated in the vanilla manual ( reducing MM ) because it opens space for more MM ( to avoid losing hammers to thin air , pretty much as it happened in previous version of civ ) and it was most likely because of that reason that Firaxis, in spite of knowing of this issue for quite a while ( atleast since the date of vale's article ) has not touched that part of the code in the expansion and in the 6 patches ( 8, counting with the update to 1.74 and 2.13 with 3.17 ) that were launched from that day on.....
Note, I'm not saying that I agree with the code as it is. I'm just very reticent to the idea of saying that Dresden solution is better than the original code.
popejubal
Emperor
I agree. I like having a crippled AI that makes boneheaded decisions because I like to get my wins more easily. I can't be bothered to put the extra effort and thought into my game that the betterAI upgrades would require and I believe that I'm morally superior to all of the people who want that extra challenge because I'm playing the game the way it was supposed to be played.
In fact, I didn't get any of the patches and I'm playing the Vanilla game that came with the original release CD and I didn't put any patches on at all because that's the original game and that's how the game is supposed to be played. Also, truly superior game play involves Amphibious Elephants.
Edit: I realized after I hit "Save" that this came across as even more snarky than I had intended. I like betterAI quite a bit, but any game this complex will have gameplay issues that are worth debate. The designers did some amazingly brilliant things and fairly boneheaded things (although not too very many of the latter). I look at unofficial patches the same way that I look at a mod. If it makes the game better for me, then it's worth playing. If it doesn't make the game better for me, then I'll stick to the original. I'm currently ploughing my way through Fall From Heaven 2's Scenarios and I'm having a blast. I don't think that anyone would call that "official", but it's an absolute blast.
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