Rules: ROP, ICS, scout blocking ...

[Bamspeedy]

ROP Attack Exploit:

The reason that I have never done the ROP attack exploit is because I've never had enough forces to pull it off.
It would seem to me that if you have enough forces to park outside every city that the AI have (Do you have to use espionage to look at the target cities to ensure you have your forces deployed according to your adversaries defenses? That may not be so cheap!). Then declare war and win every city in one turn that you were going to win the war anyway! This does have the added benefit of preventing culture flipping back to the targeted AI but there are ways to deal with that problem in other ways also.
Anyway, I think this sort of blitzkrieg tactic is "war legal", in a turn based game.

Well, I'm sure most people don't take out all the cities in one turn although it has been done. Most people just park a stack next to the civ's capital and maybe a few other high production cities. You can use your embassy and investigate city to find out their garrison, which usually is only 2 or 3 units. Then it's rather cheap.
Plus, it gives the AI absolutely no time to respond. It may not be honarable to not give the AI time to respond, but if I want to pull of a warrior rush, I won't give him a notice of war, so he can't pop-rush a spearman, for example.

I'm not saying whether or not this is an exploit, just clarifying what is being done.

ICS [Infinite City Sprawl]:

I have used ICS and it is very powerful. However, you have to focus alot of resources that may be better focused on other developmental areas such as military, expansion, or economic endeavors. I look at ICS as a milking and/or cultural tactic. The more cities that you have the faster you can get to a 100,000 cultural victory. I doubt I would use ICS for a conquest or domination type of victory.

It could be used for conquest or domination, also. Just look at Aeson's games. Although you do, generally need a good map and/or low difficulty for this to work, though. In GOTM6 and his HoF game, he created a settler flood. Build cities extremely close, and every city building another settler and a few workers, here and there to build roads. It doesn't take long before you have hundreds of cities and make so much money, you can rush whatever military units you need. Later in the game, when you need bigger cities for production, you could disband some of the cities.

 

[BillChin]

On ROP, the most clever use of this is to go after the Great Library. This techique allows the attacking player catches up in tech at the start of the war, and is especially useful on Emperor and Deity difficulty levels. It does take some bribing to get the necessary treaties in place, but the player has no intention of continuing to pay the gold per turn, resources or luxuries.

Ship hopping is a small issue. It does not effect game balance much at all. It is on a par with landing zone blocking as far as importance--a small speck.

 

[Pelman]

Originally posted by Sirian
No matter how bad your reputation gets, AI's never mistrust you when signing diplomatic peace treaties. They never refuse to make peace, never stop offering you "market value" concessions in line with how much damage you've done to them or how much stronger your power graph is compared to theirs. The more you beat them up, the more concessions they offer, and the more you cheat them, the more you can beat them up faster and harder. The cycle feeds on itself.

If the game design had any sense in this area, reputation would affect how civs deal with you at the peace table, but it does not.

- Sirian [/B]

It seems that your expectations for the peace process are misdirected.
The more damage that you do to a Civ the more they may want you to stop.
The more desperate they are for peace, the more they will offer to get you to stop.

As far as reputation at the peace table...your reputation cannot be more "ruined."
If your opponent hates you too much for peace then they will refuse to acknowledge your envoy.
If they sit down at the peace table they are
1) suffering from war weariness
2) facing other enemies as well as you or
3) incapable of maintaining the confrontation because you have almost annihilated their Civ.

No matter how bad your reputation gets, AI's never refuse to sell you tech or resources for cash...

- Sirian [/B]

I have seen them refuse.

 

[Alphons Rodulfo]

I say: Don't make too much a fuzz about the rules. The way the GOTM is set up, there is no way to check if the players stick to the rules anyway. I like the GOTM because it lets you play a game many others are playing and you can compare notes and learn from the other's experience later on. Let's not make it an olympic sport.

Maybe I think this way because just beating the AI is a challenge to me. I can imagine the better players having to look for a challenge in beating each others' scores..