Midsea shiphopping and other stupid galley tricks

[spork]

I'm sure many have noticed that you can load units into a boat, and while on the ocean, wake them and put them into a different boat.

If you're smart, you have a boat waiting right at the last square that the boat with passangers can reach. Then, you wake all the passangers, and load them into a boat that can go another several squares. This means that if you have enough ships on the sea, and they are spaced correctly, your passangers can cover an unlimited distance in one round.

I had just tested this to its ultimate limit: I was about to win GOTM5 and had a bunch of galleys that I didn't need anymore. I set them up so that a settler boarded one of them, transferred to another, and again, until he went all the way around the world in just one turn. He then went a little further still, and was unloaded in a city on an insland. He was still able to walk three squares on a road, and that very same round make a city on this island. That's a lot of action for that settler in one turn.

But seriously, there are many cases where this midsea shiphopping is really practical. If you have railroads, enough ships and naval superiority, there is no excuse for why any combat unit should not join the fight on the turn that it is created, no matter where it was "born." This strategy is very useful when you are fighting a bitter war on a foreign contitnent and need to bring fresh reinforcements to the front lines fast.

Does anybody else use this strategy? When? Is this an "exploit?"

 

[IronicWarrior19]

Although I've not tried it on civ3 as I mainly play on one continent worlds, this strategy was available on civ2 as well, it was called ship chaining. I used it extensively on civ2, especially for transferring caravans straight to their target in one turn.

 

[Kinniken]

but a smart one

The reason it's an exploit is because the movement rate actualy represent the ship's speed, and so the distance it can move in the whole turn... by the time your first ship reach the second, the turn should be over.
An other exemple of using the "sequential" nature of time in Civ3 is when you upgrade a road to a railway track: the first workers upgrade the first bit, then the next use the railway you just created to reach the next bit and upgrade it, and so on... Even worse, it makes blitzkrieg possible by allowing you to launch attacks from cities you took in the same turn.
Well, since solving that would require reworking the whole game (like having you give commands to your units, but the units only moving at the end of the turn or something), I suppose we can just use it

 

[BillChin]

Originally posted by spork
Does anybody else use this strategy? When? Is this an "exploit?"

I use it all the time to ferry troops when there is about a two or three turn movement time between ports. It is an exploit, but a minor one. Only in cases where troops are needed somewhere ASAP does it make a difference in game outcomes.

Another fun trick is to load a unit, move the ship to another city and unload the unit. If the unit is Calvary, sometimes it can cross a bit of land and board another ship on the other side of the land mass. Works well on continents or archipelago maps.

I see chaining ships and having the unit move off the ship to another ship as a legitimate play. This way one chain is possible. The endless chaining with ships in the same square, is definitely an exploit. Maybe you can bring it up with Matrix and the other rule makers for GOTM.

 

[royfurr]

I'm afraid I am of two minds about this, and they somewhat contradict. This tactic, especially when carried to extremes, sure looks like an exploit. OTH, where its use is on a shorter distance, I occasionally do it- and don't feel guilty at all (ie don't "feel" like I've taken advantage of an exploit). For example, your on one prong of a U shaped landmass, and you need to move across the "gulf", which is 7 or 8 sea tiles across. You have wisely (IMO) built the Great Lighthouse, so your galleys have no danger cross the sea. I'll position a galley in the starting city, at the 3rd and 6th tile of the voyage, and move the two land units all the way across in one turn by taking advandage of the ability to unload at sea and reload onto an as yet unmoved ship, then move to the next roundevous point, and repeat. I generally feel ok about this for two reasons. I am tying up 3 ships to do this, so it is not "free", and is limited to the capacity of the ships. (To move 4 units I'd need to have 6 ships tied up on this deal, etc), While it IS TRUE (no need to flame me on this) that tying up 3 times as many ships DOES NOT make the journey 1/3 the time length, it does mean you simply cannot move vast number of units this way ... building enough galleys to do so means most of them are wasted, doing nothing most of the time, which is a very poor use of resources. Second, the time to turn relationship in Civ is a bit screwy, to say the least! If you were using the standard rates, it would take you 3 turns to move across that gulf in my example above. Now folks, I think we all know that galleys don't carry provisions to sail for 150 years, or if we ignore supply requirements, as is normal in Civ, do we really expect that it would actually take 150 years for that journey? Finally, tied into that, Civ sea units movement rates are, IMO, clealy frelled. They should have been able to cross that gulf in a turn anyway. But I am loath to make REAL BIG changes to sea unit movement rates in the editor in fear of the law of unintended consequences.

So I don't feel guilty about this on the small scale, but it is costly both in the fact that a number of ships are tied up in doing it, plus you have to take the time to "pre-position" them. Then to move them to some other useful location.

Clearly, moving units long distances across the map in this fashion, is less defensible, and I DON"T do that. My limiit is usually 3 X the standard distance (ie 2 at-sea transfers), I have done it ONCE with 4X or 3 transfers- and felt a little guilty.

The problem here is that in things like GOTM or MP, how do you rely on a player being "reasonable" about something like this? For that matter, for HOF claims?

I don't know if this can be institionalized by making a "load/unload" cycle limit in the code. THis would allow the way I do it (say a 3X distance limit or 2 load/unload cycles). Opps, thats really a 3 cycle limit- you've got the inital and final ports loads and unloads to include as well. This seems to be a code issue, so there is nothing we can do about it in the editor.

I never did MP with Civ2, so is this simi-exploit doable there? If not, then the designers clearly prevented it with code. IF it is doable , how did players deal with the issue?

One way to reduce its potentcy would be to NOT ALLOW regular movement of a land unit on the same turn as loaded (at-sea) movement, but that would reduce the importance of ports- thats the way it seems to work with load/unload to coast/land tiles that are not citys, and I am not sure if that is a good idea. Maybe have this provision IF you made an at-sea transfer with the unit, but NOT if you didn't. But that is still a code issue.

Frankly, Firaxis has other more significant issues to deal with if they are going to actually modify code.

Me, I just stay reasonable with it. I don't always do it when I can because of the number of ships tied up and the time to set it up, you can almost do things as fast anyway in some cases.

But clearly moving units half-way round the world is a true exploit. I won't do that. But I have self constaint (at least about THAT ONE THING!!). How to handle others who won't hestitate do anything to win or run up the score is the real question.


Civ on.

 

[BillChin]

Originally posted by royfurr
I don't know if this can be institionalized by making a "load/unload" cycle limit in the code. THis would allow the way I do it (say a 3X distance limit or 2 load/unload cycles). Opps, thats really a 3 cycle limit- you've got the inital and final ports loads and unloads to include as well. This seems to be a code issue, so there is nothing we can do about it in the editor.

I never did MP with Civ2, so is this simi-exploit doable there? If not, then the designers clearly prevented it with code. IF it is doable , how did players deal with the issue?

One way to reduce its potentcy would be to NOT ALLOW regular movement of a land unit on the same turn as loaded (at-sea) movement, but that would reduce the importance of ports- thats the way it seems to work with load/unload to coast/land tiles that are not citys, and I am not sure if that is a good idea. Maybe have this provision IF you made an at-sea transfer with the unit, but NOT if you didn't. But that is still a code issue.

Frankly, Firaxis has other more significant issues to deal with if they are going to actually modify code.

If Firaxis wants to take out the exploit it is easy enough. One way is to limit loading/unloading to once per turn per land unit, just as "walking" on to ships from land is already limited. This would allow one chaining and only if the transport ship already has spent one turn at sea. This cuts down on the worst of it, the endless chaining, and the troops marching across continents then transferring to several ships. While allowing players with extra ships to move troops slightly faster on long ocean crossings.

A more radical fix is to stop sea-to-sea transfers all together. This forces a player to find a port or a scrap of land and take extra turns to transfer troops from one ship to another.

Both fixes are relatively easy to put in the code, and testing needed is minimal. I agree that Firaxis has bigger fish to fry, but if they want to fix this, it seems easy enough.

 

[royfurr]

Your right, it would be easier to fix this then I thought.

Of course, this ship to ship at sea thing existed in Civ II and they DIDN'T fix it for III. I wonder why? I wouldn't THINK they that feel that its ok, it seems like such an exploit, especially the "endless" chains.

As you said, it shouldn't have been hard to fix ... one can *almost* conclude that they think its ok ... still that seems such a stretch ...

 

[Sodak]

Ship chaining is not a cheat, only a minor exploit. It has been pointed out that in order to move your units X times farther, you need X times as many ships. It is an exploit only because the AI does not know how to do it. But then, their galleys don't sink anyway...