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SGOTM 09 - Maintenance Thread
- Thread starter AlanH
- Start date
There's an exploit at large that some of you may not be aware of that I feel I have to disclose in order that everyone has the same tools available to them.
If you Shift-right click a unit and then drag the mouse around the map, you start to give the unit a move order. You get some information for each tile you point it at while the right button is held down. Firstly, if the unit is a settler, and the computer believes the location is a good settling point, the "Settle" button lights up. Secondly, you see the minimum number of moves for that unit to reach a location. This applies to visible tiles AND tiles under the fog.
We hope to prevent this exploit in the next HoF Mod, but for now it's out there; it's impossible to prevent its use; and so we had better all know about it.
If you Shift-right click a unit and then drag the mouse around the map, you start to give the unit a move order. You get some information for each tile you point it at while the right button is held down. Firstly, if the unit is a settler, and the computer believes the location is a good settling point, the "Settle" button lights up. Secondly, you see the minimum number of moves for that unit to reach a location. This applies to visible tiles AND tiles under the fog.
We hope to prevent this exploit in the next HoF Mod, but for now it's out there; it's impossible to prevent its use; and so we had better all know about it.
Lord Parkin
aka emperor
Frankly, I don't see what the big deal is. What do you gain from doing this? Knowing a location in the fog might have good resources around? Knowing how far away a tile is (which you can get from geometric analysis anyway, if you're pedantic)? I'm really at a loss as to why one would even bother to classify this as an "exploit", as it seems so minor. 
Lord Parkin
aka emperor
Meh, I guess so. I don't know if I'd be pedantic enough to worry about it myself though. Knowing where the boundaries of the island/continent/whatever are a little ahead of time isn't a big issue.Well, AlanH left out the most important point.
From how the path is drawn you can learn if the movement is up, down or level. That means you can tell for every tile in the fog if it is water, flat, hill or peak.
I didn't think that needed to be spelt out. I hoped people would use some intelligence to realise that I would not post a trivial fact, and they would do a little thinking about the implications. I was obviously wrong!
Whether it is significant? Dunno, but this is a cut-throat competition at the top. If you are in the running for an award every piece of intelligence helps.
Whether it is significant? Dunno, but this is a cut-throat competition at the top. If you are in the running for an award every piece of intelligence helps.
WARNING
No doubt a lot of players will be trying this now. You MUST be careful not to move the unit you are using. This is easy to get wrong.
I recommend you practice on a test map, not on the live one, and that *only* the active team player uses it on the real map when s/he is fully competent with it..
No doubt a lot of players will be trying this now. You MUST be careful not to move the unit you are using. This is easy to get wrong.
I recommend you practice on a test map, not on the live one, and that *only* the active team player uses it on the real map when s/he is fully competent with it..
Ronnie1
Deity
Wise words AlanH...wise words indeed!!
r_rolo1
King of myself
Knowing the code for the blue circles, I think that using this has the potential to be more damaging than helpful. But that is just my opinion.....
PLEASE make sure you know which saves are Practice maps, and which is The Real Thing !
Playing with the wrong save is a major opportunity to get you and your team into my bad books.
FWIW, this is just one of the reasons I dislike practice maps, but we seem to be stuck with them
Playing with the wrong save is a major opportunity to get you and your team into my bad books.
FWIW, this is just one of the reasons I dislike practice maps, but we seem to be stuck with them
mabraham
Deity
PLEASE make sure you know which saves are Practice maps, and which is The Real Thing !
Playing with the wrong save is a major opportunity to get you and your team into my bad books.
FWIW, this is just one of the reasons I dislike practice maps, but we seem to be stuck with them
The practice map I made was mirror-imaged... that might help avoid the problem. I didn't have this objective in mind - just got sick of autogenerating maps and went with something that looked like it satisfied most of the constraints I had in mind!
Lord Parkin
aka emperor
I hope this is a pre-emptive warning, and that someone hasn't already made this mistake on one of the teams. 
Lord Parkin
aka emperor
That bad, huh. 
Well, I'll trust the admins to make the correct judgment calls when and where needed. Ideally this wouldn't happen at all though.
Well, I'll trust the admins to make the correct judgment calls when and where needed. Ideally this wouldn't happen at all though.
Just to make the barbarian setting a bit clearer:
The barbarians has as earlier stated not been given any extra starting techs (beyond what the game automatically give them).. in fact it is impossible to give them any extra techs since the starting saves are made from a worldbuilder save, and barbarian tech settings doesn't exist in this file..
They have also not been given any free starting units. (But don't let this lull you into a false safety)
Since raging barbarians are NOT turned on, that doesn't leave many options for how I made the barbarians more wicked than normal... most teams seems to have guessed or learned parts of this this was done already.
The barbarians has as earlier stated not been given any extra starting techs (beyond what the game automatically give them).. in fact it is impossible to give them any extra techs since the starting saves are made from a worldbuilder save, and barbarian tech settings doesn't exist in this file..
They have also not been given any free starting units. (But don't let this lull you into a false safety)
Since raging barbarians are NOT turned on, that doesn't leave many options for how I made the barbarians more wicked than normal... most teams seems to have guessed or learned parts of this this was done already.
Lord Parkin
aka emperor
Indeed.
By the way, a query: what's going on with team CRC? From the thread post count details, they're still on 6 replies total and the last one was 9 days ago. Are they using PM's or a different forum or something for their discussions? (Is that allowed? I thought everyone was supposed to discuss things in their set thread?)
Just making sure we don't have a dead team or something. Every other team thread seems to be active with new posts every day, and most are around the 100 reply mark now. (Some, like ours, are already close to the 200 reply mark.
) So CRC is very much the odd one out.
By the way, a query: what's going on with team CRC? From the thread post count details, they're still on 6 replies total and the last one was 9 days ago. Are they using PM's or a different forum or something for their discussions? (Is that allowed? I thought everyone was supposed to discuss things in their set thread?)
Just making sure we don't have a dead team or something. Every other team thread seems to be active with new posts every day, and most are around the 100 reply mark now. (Some, like ours, are already close to the 200 reply mark.
) So CRC is very much the odd one out.
erikthecelt
Old, Geezer, Unoriginal
CRC use a Russian site as they are not all fluent in English. It's well known and has been going on for a long time. Someone from the team will post summaries of their discussions from time time.
Lord Parkin
aka emperor
Okay, thanks for clarifying. I suspected it might be something like that.
TheMeInTeam
If A implies B...
- Joined
- Jan 26, 2008
- Messages
- 27,989
Hmph. As a fellow map maker I can take a guess at the possible tricks left to you with barbs in a WB save. Which one(s) you chose are another matter.
The unit move exploit is interesting. If I understand it correctly, however, you wouldn't be able to discern between forests and hills easily, as both interrupt pathing similarly. I can think of some other cheesy abuses, but as a competitor I'm not going to intentionally level the playing field further than this.
