I see you decided again to populate this thread with our sterile debate, instead of deleting your above post. I offered you the option to both delete our posts (just like we did earlier). It seems you refused.
Now,
It is a shame (and completely ridiculous) that I have to prove every single statement I said by quoting myself, but you force me to do it. It is not a normal way to discuss.
First, here's the whole text I initially wrote on the subject. This is the text you reacted to. I refer to it often during this long post:
"Unrestricted leader is also a
kind of cheat, as it permits the player to chose what is really unbalanced combinations of traits, UU and UU. Don't tell me a player chosing Boudica with the Roman Praetorian is playing a fair game...
These options are placed in the game to please every kind of player,
but you shouldn't analyze the validity or not of incorporating this traits combo in the game based on these options.
Again, do you think Firaxis based their decision of incorporating the Agg/Cha based on tests games with the Roman Praetorians?
Of course, they did not."
Not at all, it was a 180 degree spin from your previous comments, because your previous comments hadn't accurately represented your real position. You don't actually believe that Unrestricted Leaders is "cheating". At least, if I understand what you wrote in the other thread. But that's what you were actually saying. So when you say "Unrestricted Leaders" is cheating, and then say "Well, Unrestricted Leaders isn't really cheating", it certainly comes off as a contradiction.
1) Here is the exchange on 180
Me: "I'll concede that unrestricted leaders is not
necessarily cheating (For instance, an english Gandhi, wouldn't be cheating that much as it doesn't add much unfair and artificial advantages)."
You: "Wait, after all that above, suddenly you've done a 180? "It's cheating, it's cheating, it's cheating. Well, ok, no, it's not really cheating". "
HOWEVER, here is the
full text I wrote
"I'll concede that unrestricted leaders is not necessarily cheating (For instance, an english Gandhi, wouldn't be cheating that much as it doesn't add much unfair and artificial advantages).
But, unrestricted leaders can easily lead to cheating because, it still allows the player to systematically choose the best combo/synergy in order to exploit (in the sense of taking undue advantage) a game feature (i.e. Roman Boudica)."
How can you separate the two sentences while the whole paragraphs is meant to be interpreted together. This clearly seemed dishonest to me, when I saw you did this. I thought I was really obvious. It was a nuance
I used a BUT right next to the sentence which you use to claim I did a 180. I used a BUT and you forgot about it in your appraisal of my comment. The whole paragraph is a nuanced statement on the issue. How could you not see that?
I also used the word NECESSARILY. When you say X is not necessarily Y. It also means that X
can still be Y.
In our case, the first sentence clearly and obviously meant that UL is not always cheating, but it can still be cheating nonetheless. The word NECESSARILY confirms this meaning. Again NUANCE.
Now remember I used "KIND OF CHEATING" in my initial post.
"Kind of cheating"
"not necessarily cheating"
"BUT UL can easily lead to cheating"
These are all NUANCED statements. The nuances were there. If you couldn't see them, it is your mistake not mine. Can you see why I accused you of being dishonest?
The 180 remark was a clear misrepresentation of my position.
If you were merely unsure what the expressions "kind of cheating" or "necessarily" really meant, it was your duty to ask precisions,
before stating your own conclusions and observations on these comments. Instead, you laughed at me and judge my position instead of understanding it.
In the case of the expression "kind of cheating". I was vague on purpose, because I knew this all had to be nuanced.
With this as with many other comments of yours, it seemed to me that you chose on purpose to speak a different language than the one I was using.
After reading your other comments, what I believe you meant was "Unrestricted Leaders isn't cheating, using it to select excessively powerful Leader/Civ combinations is". And while I don't agree with that, I find it to be a much greyer area to argue over.
"kind of cheating" I was grey from the start.
Then, you address my initial comment.
Then I respond with comments
This comments makes you say that I did a 180... Go check the thread this is how it happened...
There are "degrees of cheating", if I might say. My opinion is that UL is this grey area where it all depends on how you define cheating.
UL is ALSO by definition, what the player. I thought that was sooooo obvious that I didn't have to make this precision at the start. To me this was self-explanatory. A person using UL to create weaker combos is not really in any way possibly close to cheating.
Again, it's a problem between what you were saying, and what you meant. I simply took what you said, and applied it logically to other areas where it clearly didn't fit. But since what you said didn't fit with what you meant, it appeared to you that the interpretation was incorrect.
This is useless as you won't recognize in the slightest way that it is possible you made mistakes while reading my comments. See above, there were nuances in my comments that you didn't grasp. So don't claim that your application of what I said to other areas was logical, because it was not. You misunderstood what I wrote (refusing or not seeing nuances where there were many), you then used your intellectual representation of what I wrote and applied it to areas which it couldn't be applied because the comparison didn't make any sense (see below on your bad comparisons).
I'm sure you won't recognize it but that is what happened.
Are you able to recognize that you do make mistakes like the rest of humanity? Is it possible that you misread?
It was a perfectly valid interpretation of your own words.
This sentence of yours refers to my critique of your comparison with the Apostolic palace, corporation and
It was not valid because, you tend to forget the context. You take my texts sentence by sentence, without a clear view of the whole picture. My "kind of a cheat comment" was based on a debate as to what is the best way to test ind/phi. You forget that and end up interpreting the rest wrong because of it.
You also had a incorrect image of my position from the start (see above on necessarily, but and all that)
Following up on this point, you said:
I mean, effectively that argument can be summarized as "Unrestricted Leaders is cheating because they didn't have it in Vanilla or Warlords". But if that were true, then anything that isn't in Vanilla or Warlords would have to be cheating.
Now obviously you didn't mean that. But based on what you said, that's how it came across to me.
That is how you read it. That is not how I said it.
Here is how I said it:
"With this option turned on,
it is very very easy for players to exploit the features of the game, which were not designed to be played that way.
Boudica was not designed to be played with the best UU of the game. Her UU is actually considered one of the worst by many here. Do you think that this was not done on purpose?
Unrestricted leader was not an option in previous civ games and it was not an option in Vanilla and Warlord. It is not the real way the game should be played.
It has been added in BTS simply to add a new flavor and prolong the lifetime of this game. It was added to please players who want to try new artificia combinations. In terms of game balance, unrestricted leaders doesn't make sense."
First, I agree that the statement, saying it is not the "real way the game should be played" is quite strong.
But if interpreted in the context of the first paragraph and of the third paragraph, you should have understood what I meant more or less.
I agree here that you could have gotten a bit wrong, if you focus to much on the middle sentence, but with the rest it would have been clear.
With the rests of the text what comes across is that it was not the way the designers envisioned the game. This is not how the designers want us to play civ4, vanilla, warlord or BTS. The designers created this game and all of its incarnation, with the unrestricted leader checked off in mind. The normal way to play civ is with UL checked off.
Since it was not designed properly with UL in mind. Chosing UL can lead to all kinds of unbalances situation. Therefore, you can't consider UL to be nothing more than a flavor option, an option which is not meant to create fair games. An option which is a good way to get unfair advantages, unfair advantages not so far of my definition of cheating.
Right, I can agree with that - but that's not what you said before, and it's not what you said above. Once again, you aren't making yourself clear, and it's causing confusion. Again, you say "Unrestricted Leaders" when you mean "Overpowered Combinations". Those two things are NOT synonomous.
First, these comment of mine to which these sentences of yours were meant to clarify the original point I wanted to comment on. After that we got into a debate more oriented on the cheating issue. However, I never forgot my initial comment. It seems you did, which explains why you misinterpreted some of my other messages.
I again refer to you to my initial comment reproduced above. Here's an excerpt of what I said: "These options are placed in the game to please every kind of player, but you shouldn't analyze the validity or not of incorporating this traits combo in the game based on these options."
Since the guy was using a modified Churchill Ind/phi, combined with the Romans to use the Forums, I think it is perfectly clear that what I meant is that this method is not how you should test ind/phi.
You responded to this message. You based your argument on the cheating issue, on how UL was not cheating.
It was beside my first point, but I made the mistake of getting dragged into a debate on cheating by you. I however often had my initial post in mind, while writing to you.
Also, on your overpowered combo vs. UL sentence:
I explained above, that I thought it was OBVIOUS ("self-explanatory", I said), that my "kind of cheat" comment was referring to combination, which by using UL were overpowered. To me that went without saying. It was even more obvious with the fact that the other poster was using the Romans with Churchill as his basis for his Ind/phi combo.
Right, but if you think about it, you quickly realize that (a) Unrestricted Leaders had nothing to do with it, and (b) that poster was kinda silly.
Why would you modify Churchill to be Ind/Phi and then play the Romans, when you could simply modify Augustus or Julius to be Ind/Phi? The only difference would be your characters portrait, everything else would be identical (from the player's perspective). Choosing Unrestricted Leaders was irrelevant because there was no need to do so.
That is true, but that is still what he did, and that is still what Spearthrower and him partly were debating on before I intervened. So, I simply commented on the debate:
Paraphrasing my initial comment: "UL is kind of a cheat when used in the way you do. Bad choice for a test. It's hard to test the balance of game, when you're quite close to cheating."
Perhaps not the best test. But it actually can be a good test, depending on the outcome. Basically, yes, if the game turns out to be a runaway, then you have to consider the "pollution" added by the UB. But what if the game isn't a runaway? In that case, it actually makes the point stronger - if the combination isn't overpowered when you have a synergistic UB, then it certainly wouldn't be when you don't.
Possibly, but that is debatable (and I was ready to debate on this). The thing is that by this test the guy didn't properly isolate the variable (ind/phi) he wanted to analyze. The worst with is test, I thought, was the synergy with Romans' UB. It would give a VERY false picture of the number of great people and GP points the trait combo could give under more normal circumstances. Even if he underachieved in terms of power (I highly doubt it, unless he doesn't know what he is doing), the numbers of great people obtained would have been wrong.
No, that's what you initially said. After that, in your subsequent arguments, you often referred to Unrestricted Leaders in general as cheating.
This sentences of yours refers to my coment where I say I never called anyone a cheater.
First, this doesn't disprove the fact that I called no one a cheater. I don't blame people for using UL. This is not some moral crusade for Civ purity I was on. I understand that UL is an interesting way to play the game. Still, we have to be honest with ourselves and recognize that UL can provide unfair advantages, which I consider "kind of cheating"
My reference of UL as generally cheating were always done based on the assumption that the terms of the debate had been set with the original discussion in mind. Talking generally about UL in general (as in using overpowered combos through UL) didn't mean that it was not related to the main argument. On the contrary, it was related to the argument that it is not a good test.
Refering to UL as cheating was also nuanced in my mind by my first reply to you, which clearly said that UL is not necessarily cheating, but that it can easily be like cheating.
In fact, you specifically brought up the example of Boudica of the Romans, which was not what that player had chosen in his example, so you obviously were not referring to him.
First, context is again important here:
You have to remember that the guy was defending his use of UL in other posts above mine. This part of the debate was set before I came in. I commented on the debate, as I saw it when I posted this comment.
He was using (regenerating maps and UL) as if they were good options to analyze Ind/phi and the game in general. They are not.
My comment on roman Boudica now: That is just how it came out!!! You try to read too much into my post here by implying a particular intent on the fact that I used Roman Boudica.
It is simply the first example that came through my mind, because I (and most) saw and still see this combo as highly overpowered.
I just thought that using this example was a convenient and easy way to illustrate how his test used a very bad premise, a premise which was not representative of you average civ games.
Beelining to machinery is an artifical advantage because the AI doesn't know how to do it. It doesn't understand the importance of it. Any time the player takes advantage of knowledge that the AI doesn't have, that's an "artificial advantage". Therefore my example stands.
That is still an in-game decision (very situational) that is far removed from the action of grabbing as much advantages you can get through the use of the options prior to the game.
The word artificial is also pretty important in what I meant. To me, this referred to toying with the game prior to its start by creating artificial situation and/or combos which are to the players advantage and which are quite different to the average way the game is played. It didn't refer to in-game designs and AI idiosyncrasies that are part of every games. I wouldn't call "artificial" something that has been included in all games. Artificial is related to the notion that it is not normal...
A guy used the expression stocking the deck in advance. That was the behavior I was considering "kind of cheating". That is obvious in my numerous replies.
Also, you equated Unrestricted leaders to others things which were not accurate.
You equated UL to fractal maps and Aggressive AI. UL (used to create overpowered combos [see, I now feel I have to specify every damn word I write because you can't seem to understand the common sense of the words I use]), is clearly different compared to the other two options you cited. Saying, as you did that Agg AI, fractal map and UL can be compared is oversimplification. As I said earlier UL enables the player to get an overpowered combo, but it doesn't allow the AI to do the same.
On the other hand, AGG AI and Fractal map applies to all.
Of course, you can argue that since the player has KNOWLEDGE of the settings, he has an advantage. Too small an advantage this is to be compared to high-powered combos.
Refusing to acknowledge that this comparison of yours fudges the facts and makes a caricature of what I really meant is either intellectual dishonesty or misplaced pride on your part.
Another bad comparison you did: you compared using UL (for overpower combo) to receiving 3 golds when you start playing the game...
Are seriously saying that such a comparison has any kind of validity. One has nothing to do with the other. Do I really have to explain it to you? One is manmade the other is random-generated. Plain and simple.
On a sidenote, it's a board here. It's not a master's thesis or a scientific research where you have to clearly define and justify every concept you use.
People use synonyms, people are often vague in their comments. Still, people usually understand eachother (I,m usually understood pretty well).
You stick to my words as if I have an operative definition for everyone of them.
I do, in my researches for my studies, I do. But not here. You ask for crystal clear sentences and concept. That is an unfair demand on these boards. If can't understand me based on what I wrote, it is for you to ask for precison, it is not my job to define and clarify every sentence I write before you ask for it.
I only did it to prove how you misinterpreted my comments and how you came up with dubious argumentations which amounted to equating UL with receiving 3 golds, choosing fractal maps, Aggressive AI or beelining to machinery.
None of which are of the same nature as a UL overpowered combo.
(I've only tried it once I swear). There's so many choices for leaders and civs that sometimes I spend minutes trying to decide on what civ/leader to play, having a PHI/IND leader wouldn't change that for me I'd still have trouble deciding.
