SGOTM 17 - Pre-game Discussion Thread

[kcd_swede]

.Are you ? As the mapmaker? What for? The Quartermaster is Protective and Imperialistic and stuck in the corner of the map. What's there to fear?

Always War sounds better to me. That really requires some skill.

Yes, I am scared that you guys wouldn't have fun. Then I would have failed as a mapmaker.

There is nothing to fear but fear itself.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

I'm sorry about whatever I may have said that curtailed discussion of potentially banning what some consider "exploitative" manipulation of the AIs, either directly or indirectly.

Final summary of my position on the issue of banning exploits for SGOTM competitions:

However, it is my opinion that such discussions should be held in a thread dedicated to a specific "exploit". Secondly, there should be a really high standard that must be met for an "exploit" to be banned or limited in use by additional rules that can't be enforced by the game or a game module. Thirdly, I believe that only a small minority of SGOTM players are really interested in banning/limiting marginally "exploitable" game mechanisms; it's probably an unwelcome SGOTM tradition for the majority of the players who probably don't want a long list of "exploit" related ancillary rules they must comply with to compete.

Thank you for your consideration,

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[soundjata]

^ got me here Still Kaku has yet to dare the infinite city gifting technique

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

^ got me here Still Kaku has yet to dare the infinite city gifting technique

Most effective when actually liberating a city for +1.5 Diplomacy for each iteration of the exploit rather than simply giving a city without the liberation Diplomacy benefit. The technique is usually done while remaining at War with the target Civ, continually liberating its cities, thus -3 Diplomacy is avoided for each DoW that would otherwise be needed.

This exploit has been recently banned (for HoF games at least) as an obviously taboo exploit whose magnitude in a sense actually exceeds getting multiple technologies from The Oracle or 1st to Liberalism. (One can get an arbitrary large Diplomacy bounded only by the number of turns in a game minus exploit setup turns, whereas one can't get more free Technologies than the number that actually remain when the exploit starts.) Using this technique, one can remain Friendly with a Civ while doing great damage to the Civ and incurring many hits to one's Diplomacy with the Civ.

I would be adamantly against using such a technique in any game, whether or not it is officially banned in a respective competition. I hope no one would actually attempt to use such a obviously exploitative technique in the absence of a ban against its use.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Deckhand]

This is a friendly competition, if we have a consensus that doing something is not desireable and we agree not to do it, that should be enough. Although these exploits can't be detected in an individual game, it would be quite hard to do them in this team game. Everything is discussed in detail before and after a players turn. A whole team would need to conspire to engage in the trade exploit and to not discuss it in their thread. An individual would be caught by his team.

There are lots of rules that can't be enforced, yet are in place.

Moderator Action: Deleted. Thanks. We don't need cheats published.

The admins don't need to check for violations. We just need to have a statement that summarizes the intent (don't trade gold to an AI with intent to get extra gold from them later by subsizing initial trades and canceling the gold giveaway later). I believe all the teams would comply.
Discussing enforceability is a diversion.

 

[shakabrade]

About 1600 plots.

Sorry to disturb but 1600 LAND tiles or overall tiles?

 

[Ronnie1]

Sorry to disturb but 1600 LAND tiles or overall tiles?

I believe it says "plots", and 1600 is a pretty even number to be just land tiles unless there is no water at all.

 

[TalladegaKnight]

Are the old SGOTM's not available to replay?

Going here brings back an error when selecting download worldbuilder save.

Just want to get a flavor for the types of challenges involved.

 

[Gumbolt]

I can't download it either now. Perhaps it was removed? I think you can still download the start saves for each teams? If you look at graphs options one give choice of list of saves.

Remember the starts will appear more daunting than they might seem. With team games you can normally knock 1 level of difficulty off the playing level as your micro/ worker use and game play is much slower and more precise.

 

[shakabrade]

I believe it says "plots", and 1600 is a pretty even number to be just land tiles unless there is no water at all.

I agree 1600 is a round number but about 1600 is about round number

Low sea level and + land obstacles (artificial map) to prevent easy conquest can easily make 1600 land tiles (40x40).

 

[AlanH]

Sorry to disturb but 1600 LAND tiles or overall tiles?

Total tiles. Approximately.

 

[Ronnie1]

I didn't read your or the original post that close. I would guess it is one of the flat maps that is 52*32 for 1664 tiles.

 

[AlanH]

Are the old SGOTM's not available to replay?

Going here brings back an error when selecting download worldbuilder save.

Just want to get a flavor for the types of challenges involved.

Sorry about that, I've fixed it. Another bug that's been there a while, and no one noticed

 

[bestsss]

and no one noticed

More like no one reported... the simple workaround is to get any team's first born save.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Some players still want to ban an "optimal" strategy for getting the maximum Wpt for a resource. As several other players have pointed out, the AI never trades more Wpt for a resource than the AI is programmed to consider a fair trade. So this really boils down to banning optimal play and indirectly penalizing teams for such optimal play. The SGOTM competitions should be rewarding optimal play and not thinking of "fair ways" to prevent it.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Folket]

I think there is a clear majority already for not making any rules. I do not think we need to discuss it more.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

I think there is a clear majority already for not making any rules. I do not think we need to discuss it more.

That is probably true, but I still wanted to make the point that what we considered banning wasn't really an exploit at all, but was in fact optimal play to maximize return from a specific game mechanic.

In the future when something similar comes up, we can ask ourselves whether what we propose to ban is an obvious exploit or merely optimal play. That question may save us some discussion time in the future. However, ... Sometimes, something will appear to be both, which is why we had such difficulty with this Wpt issue.

My intent was to summarize the issue and put it to rest.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Pangaea]

Just to confirm, is this resource trading bug allowed?

Don't like that tbh. It probably means all teams will try to take advantage of it to gain an edge, in turn making the whole experience "less fun". Gifting an AI 1 gpt until the total gpt he's willing to give stops increasing, then making a "killer" trade, and then cancelling the small 'gifts' after 10 turns, and then having a really good trade going until the AI possibly sees sense (hah!). I know I'm a nobody here, but doesn't this break with the spirit of the competition, to take advantage of AI stupidity (poor coding) like this? Then there is the resource pillage exploit that was mentioned up-thread as well (hadn't heard about that one before).

I know these things are virtually impossible to detect and thus get punished for its use, but wouldn't it be better with an agreement to not use it? People might still do it of course, but then it will be on their conscience and not something all teams have to try to take advantage of if it is allowed.

 

[ChrisShaffer]

I'm (reasonably) sure Unusual Suspects won't use these exploits, whether others do or not.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Assume the AI considers 8 Wpt for a resource a fair trade. Team A can get 1 Wpt and Team B can get 7 Wpt. How is that either fair to the AIs or more importantly fair to the Team A and Team B? So, is it really better to just take what the AI first offers? By offering a subsidy, every Team can potentially get the 8 Wpt that the AIs considers a fair trade. The cost is the 1-7 Wpt in subsidies for 10t. Also there is a risk it won't even work.

Offering a substidy is simply intelligent play. There is no exploit. There is nothing wrong with maximizing your return on every game mechanic, unless that return exceeds the design limit. Assume again that the AI considers 8 Wpt for an ordinary resource like Corn a fair trade. Getting 1-8 Wpt for such a resource is therefore fair from the AIs perspective. However, if we were able to get 9-99 Wpt or more for an ordinary resource that would exceed what the AI considers fair and that would an exploit. Even getting just 9 Wpt would be an exploit. The maximum this technique can provide in this example is 8 Wpt which the AI considers fair, thus there is no exploit.

Sun Tzu Wu