My instincts are in line with Sun Tzu Wu's philosophy.
We are not the designers of BtS, we are trying to create interesting ways to investigate it and learn about it. A bug has to be a serious game breaker before we decide to ban it. This one doesn't feel like that to me.
As long as everyone is aware of the existence of this option, they can choose whether to use it - and it sounds as if there will always be purely tactical arguments in favour and against its use.
In other words, I haven't yet been persuaded that we should ban it.
I rescind my previous vote for banning the Gpt Bug. I'm also indifferent game-wise and the headache for the admins sounds extreme. Like Kossin, though, I'd happily go along with a gentleman's agreement to not abuse it.
What I mean by that is a rule that we understand AlanH can't easily enforce. That's how we resolved the Flying Camera issue. Here's the rationale I used for that before (from memory):
1. This is a friendly competition. It's not the dog-eat-dog world.
2. The CRC is a friendly website, known for its high standards of fair play.
3. If the exploit is allowed, all players are more or less forced to take advantage of it, given the opportunity, to compete for the laurels.
4. If the exploit is banned, those players who are strongly against using the exploit can feel free to not use it, knowing that all honest competitors aren't using it.
5. If the exploit is not considered to be a game-breaker, all the more reason to ban it without concern for its enforcement, if there's general consensus that it's peculiar use is an exploit.
That's good enough for me. I'd rather trust fair play than feel obligated to use agreed-upon exploits. I don't care if cheaters win. I'll never know anyway. Let them rot in hell with their bad conscience. I'd rather assume we all played within the rules we set and my team got beaten fairly.
And there's one more benefit of this point of view:
6. AlanH and other admins can likewise feel good about the competition they're creating without any added burden of trying to enforce good rules that are tedious to enforce.
Another way of putting it this: We all konw that PD is the best team right now. If they say they're not going to use it, that's good enough for me.
It shouldn't be a pain for players to play like gentle(wo)men. So I'm all for a gentlemen's agreement, like with flying cameras and radar tricks. If you want to use them, on your head it be, with addded shame and contempt from the community.
You seem to mi8ssunderstand my reply.
"I'd happily go along with a gentleman's agreement to not abuse it. "
As that if formulated it is ok to do this as long as it is not absued. If we have a gentlemen agreement to not do it I'm fine with that, that means we make it a rule. But a gentelmen agreement to not "abuse" it mean it is up to the player to decide what abuse is.
A Gentleman's Agreement is an informal contract without provisions for external or legal enforcement. However, it is assumed that the parties know when the informal contract is broken. For example two Merchants can have a Gentlemen's Agreement to charge the same prices (not undercut each other) and they can easily verify compliance, but neither can do anything to enforce the agreement. Can these two Merchants have a Gentlemen's Agreement to give 5% of their income to charities anonymously? No. While they both know they can't enforce this "agreement", they also know they can't even verify compliance with it. They may as well independenly agree to the same deal without even communicating it to each other, since neither has the ability to measure compliance anyway.
Thus, any so-called Gentlemen's Agreement to do or not do something that either can't be verified or is impractical to verify is meaningless.
Finally, a Gentlemen's Agreement would be voluntary; not binding on any individual or team, if they chose to ignore it. If the agreement is mandatory, it must be an enforceable rule.
If an individual player forgets about a Gentlemen's Agreement when playing, how would we even know this? And even if we did, we wouldn't penalize the team anyway, right?
Flying Camera trick? Radar trick? This nonsense again? More undetectable and unenforeable rules?
How many of these undetectable so-called exploits are we going to ban? The absurdity of making these unenforceable rules is beyond belief.
My advice is document them and allow them.
Doing otherwise means reverse-engineering BtS and creating new binaries that fix these problems.
I don't have room in my brain for all these make-work rules whose violations aren't detectible anyway. Not everyone can keep in mind all bans, especially a long list that includes those that aren't even detectable.
Can't we discuss something in this thread that really has a bearing on SGOTM-17 specifically rather than general rules?
Please stop trying to redefine BtS as something it isn't!
Jeez, some people don't seem to understand what a gentlemen's agreement really is. I won't spill my energy over explaining it, other than saying that precisely where a rule can't be enforced, the gentlemen's agreement comes into play. If that is too much to absorb, then fine, use all available tricks and semi-exploits available in BtS. At least I and my team won't.
STW:
The point of such bans is to prevent bugs and exploits making BtS "not fun".
If allowing something is mind-numbingly tedious, or ruins the game balance, then that is "not fun" and we should find a way to ban it or just agree not to do it. Please just accept that such agreement is a solution that works for most of us, even if you'd prefer a hard, enforcable rule.
I understand you're just posting your opinion, but an opinion can be expressed in a friendly and an unfriendly manner.
I'd also like to point out that, in contrast to you, others might consider an issue worth discussing. You'd be gracious to allow them to post their concerns in this thread and allow AlanH to moderate the thread by deciding what's relevant and what's not. In fact, AlanH even posted questions on this issue in this thread, so evidently he doesn't view people's opinions and responses as "nonsense."
Just a small nitpick: no need to reverse engineer, the source code is there. Albeit far from great code, it's very easy to read.
The exploit exist b/c the AI is truly terrible: instead of evaluating the resource offered it just gives a fixed price.
Creating the binaries or relying on python to fix the problems is not a trivial problem, though. It takes time (+some dedication) and possibly a round of QA tests...
Here is another example:
The pillage exploit is very pronounced in cases of ludicrously expensive resources like iron, asking 90+ gold/turn is stupid - to combat to stupidity, for instance, build the non-resource unit (like trebuchet), strike the deal and cancel after all-out upgrade action via pillaging a road or some resource. No gold changes hands and you get a bunch of shiny cannons.
Shall this be banned? It's not enforceable but it's very cheap way of exploiting the game mechanics.
Gentlemen! Please be polite to each other, or the next bans will be of posters rather than exploits.
The entire xOTM concept is played out as a "gentlemen's agreement". We have had this discussion before. If someone finds a way to break the agreed rules without being detected, then there is nothing I or the rest of the staff can do about it.
If you guys decide that you want to ban something, and you get the agreement of the other players to abide by that ban, then do so - it's your game, not mine. But don't expect me to find complex ways to test whether someone is ignoring you, and then punish them. You may not believe this, but I do not enjoy enforcing game rules.
And I am not going to redesign BtS. We all paid Firaxis to do it, and that's the game we play.
For example two Merchants can have a Gentlemen's Agreement to charge the same prices (not undercut each other) and they can easily verify compliance, but neither can do anything to enforce the agreement.
I know I am now a lot offtopic, but in some countries it would be illegal practice and if they would do it openly they could end in prison ;-).
As per the problem with gpt trades abuse...
I was very surprised that I didn't find any rule about gpt abuse in HOF rules, since I remember reading somewhere some really nasty abuse of giving away gpt which was borderline bug and exploit and of course cheat and I very vaguely remember reading somewhere rules about it, but surely could be now confused with civ v which in a lot of ways got back to civ iii rules (giving gpt for lump sum etc).
I apologize for the "unfriendly" matter that I expressed myself in post #52. It was late, I was exhausted and simply wanted to express my opinions on the topics of discussion, before a conclusion was made. It was still inexcusable; I should have cleaned it up before posting. I have cleaned up post #52, but simply struck-through text that should not have been posted at all, and added replacement text so you can see what I really intended to say.
In post #51, I have added a link to the Wikipedia article "Gentlemen's Agreement". Please read especially the history of the phrase. My price fixing example is based on an example in that article; yes, that is illegal in many countries around the world. From that article I got the distinct impression that the phrase is often used in a derogatory manner. I'm not sure we really want to use that phrase in reference to SGTOM or any CFC function. Perhaps call such agreements "unenforceable rules" or "null rules" or something similar that implies non-enforceability (null rule). Perhaps, such "null rules" should have a lower priority than all of the enforceable rules.
What I have stated above and in prior posts is my opinion on limited aspects of how to most efficiently host and adjudicate SGOTM competitioms with fairness to all Teams and not necessarily any fairness for the AIs.
It is not easy to craft a solid rule that captures the intent without leaving room for loopholes to be legitimately used, as far as the rule is concerned.
Unless someone can craft such a solid rule, the discussion of whether or not to enforce such a rule won't really go anywhere.
Normally, I'm the kind of person who is good at think of many angles to a problem and thus I tend to be good at rule-crafting. Yet, in this instance, I am struggling to come up with a way of wording a rule that:
a) doesn't limit existing strategic options that are related to the tactic involved but that aren't executed as a result of attempting to utilise that tactic
AND
b) covers enough of the cases that people care about
AND
c) is easy enough to remember
AND
d) doesn't have work-arounds that would get around the intent of the rule but would not be actually breaking the rule
In addition, there seems to be multiple items being discussed here:
i. getting Gold per Turn into the hands of an AI only to get a roughly equal quantity of Gold per Turn back as part of another trade
AND
ii. pillaging Resources for strategic gain
So far, I have yet to see a solid enough rule be proposed that meets all of the above criteria. If anyone cares strongly enough about the subject, then I recommend that they put their rule-crafting hats on and seriously think long and hard about coming up with a solid rule. Believe me, I have tried, and it is not an easy task.
For example, here are some thoughts that I've had and some counter-arguments that make them not very good rules:
Spoiler:
A] Don't allow gifting of Gold per Turn to an AI
One obvious flaw is that you could simply get a Resource in trade from an AI and trade the AI an excess of Gold per Turn.
So, what if we then said:
B] Don't allow gifting of Gold per Turn to an AI AND don't allow gifting more Gold per Turn than the AI asks for for their Resource
Well, right away, you can still set up trade subsidies, as an AI will generally ask for about 3 times as much for their Resource as they are willing to pay you for your Resource. So, already, just by "following what the AI asked you to give to them," you could very easily get into a situation where you are setting up a trade subsidy, even without planning to do so.
Well, what if we said:
C] You can't trade Gold per Turn in two different directions with an AI
Well, as I said earlier, while that's a relatively simple rule, it takes away a lot of potential strategic options. For example, you might hesitate to sell a Resource to an AI for whatever amount of Gold per Turn the AI is willing to give to you because you guess that an AI will soon receive a second copy of a Marble Resource or a Calendar-based Resource that they can trade to you; in other words, this rule forces you to play the game in a weird way just to avoid getting into a situation that could be quite common in the game--having Gold per Turn going back and forth in two directions simply because the trades were available at different time points in the game and at those times, a Gold per Turn value was needed to make up the difference that excess Resources could not make up for in two separate trades that you really wanted to make. In other words, putting this rule in place would make players have to play with extra constraints on their games that just complicate the normal line of thinking.
Also, I haven't even seen a rule that addresses any pillaging, but let's say that we said:
D] You cannot pillage a Resource that you are currently trading away
Well, what if someone got creative and found a way for their Spy to perform an Espionage Mission on their own Resource? That wouldn't be "pillaging" per say. Okay, so that tactic doesn't work (you can't use a Spy to Sabotage your own Resource), but it illustrates the possible fallability of any rule where the entire picture isn't understood and accounted for. What you COULD do, though, is, if there is a Resource that an AI keeps Sabotating, trade that Resource away and just count on the AI to Sabotage it again.
A more realistic counter-argument is that you could simply "allow" a Barb unit to come and pillage that Resource for you. Or, you could declare war on an AI with a wandering Axeman nearby and "allow" that AI to pillage your Resource. How do you even possibly craft a rule to deal with these cases? It makes no sense at all to even try. So, again, I'm with the philosophy of "enable all players with the knowledge and let them decide if there is a strategic use for this knowledge and decide whether or not they will make use of it."
I also have yet to see people come up with a solid argument for why trade subsidies are even a major issue. You're not actually able to trick an AI into giving away more Gold per Turn than it thinks that the Resource is valued at. At best, you can get the maximum amount of what the AI thinks is a fair value. If someone finds a way to get that full value for their Resource, all the power to that player or team.
I mean, sometimes, you don't get the full value for selling a technology*. But, I would again say that I would give all the power to the player or team who finds a way, be it through supplemental Lump Sum Gold, additional techs thrown in, or "tricky" tactics like partial-research on other techs, to get the "full value" that an AI is willing to provide for that tech.
* Note that in this discussion, the "full value" of a technology is what the AI would be willing to pay for it in the best possible circumstance, which is roughly 75% of the tech's reported Flask value, not the value that YOU PERSONALLY might think it is worth, be that based on the listed Flask value or some other value judgment that you use to determine "worth."
I also don't see a solid way around banning any pillaging of Resources because, as I said, there are other ways around such a thing by getting another player (the Barb player or an AI player) to do the deed for you. Heck, you don't even need to be at war and could just be putting Cultural Pressure on an AI's City, trade away a Resource that is shared by both Cities when the AI spawns a Great Artist, and then watch as the trade gets cancelled when the AI Culture Bombs and takes the Resource away from you.
In cases like these, where rule-crafting does not lead to a rule that meets the above criteria of being a good rule, I would much rather that all players just be aware of possible tactical uses of the tactics involved (Trade Subsidies and Resource Pillaging) and leave it up to the creativity of teams to decide if and when there are cases that apply in their games where they can use these ideas.
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