Should a new 'technique' be allowed in the GOTM?

[Duke of Marlbrough]

It may have already been known, but it has now been brought to the forefront.

Over at Poly, samson has worked out the details on getting around the road/railroad requirement that is needed to get the associated bonus with caravan/freight deliveries.

Basically, it tells how to build a 'station' city that stops the game from checking to make sure that the entire 'correct' road/railroad is built when giving the associated trade bonus.

Should we allow this to be used in the GOTM games?

If you have any questions or points of interest, post them here.

 

[grigor]

There is usually a tradeoff between the increased trade and the cost of the station city (a settler, squares taken away from the main trading city, real-life time spent in micromanagement) on what may not be otherwise a very attractive city location. Also, many people have probably inadvertently built such a city (and wondered why their trade routes were so lucrative), so distinguishing between a legitimate and an exploitative use presents difficulties.

For those reasons, this seems like a technique and not an exploit. I think it should be allowed.

 

[KingWilly]

I have to agree with grigor. You might actually want to place the 'Station' city in that particular place because it might just be a good place for a city.

Also, like grigor mentioned, all the effort it takes into producing the 'station' city makes it an even tradeoff. I think if people want to take the effort into building the extra city, let them do it.

 

[Kemal]

Although this is of course a major flaw in the game and building "station cities" does exploit this error in the program, I don't think banning it is a solution.

If I understand correctly, a station city must be build on the direct "go-to" path between the source and destination city, and thus it is very well possible to have one station city for multiple source cities, so IMHO the cost of an extra settler doesn't really balance the advantages of early increased trade routes.

However, as both grigor and KingWilly have stated above, banning this technique means forbidding people to build cities on certain locations, and these locations may be on very fertile lands where building a city is a logic thing to do. And even if it is dry, hilly lands, some players build cities no matter where, since in civ2 almost all terrain can be changed to have at least reasonable food production, and thus support a large city population.

Therefore I say there is no other options than to allow it, even though I think it really is an exploit of flawed game mechanics.

 

[Revenant]

I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about!
Can anyone fill me in?
Although i have played civ2 a LOT there are a lot of tricks i didnt know about until i recently joined the CFC. (Who knew that an airfield would increase food production? )

 

[ElephantU]

Here is the link to the discussion at Apolyton.Net:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=66560

Personally I think it is dangerously powerful, but I do concede that dis-allowing it would greatly hamper city placement. So I'm willing to change my vote to "Allowed" as long as we make the "Allowed/Disallowed" list more prominent so that everyone playing GOTM can learn these "exploits". Starlifter's thread had gotten lost back a few months; I think it should be "Sticky" along with the current GOTM and Spoiler thread.

 

[Duke of Marlbrough]

The disallowed cheats are posted on the rules page for the GOTM off the main site.

There are tons of threads that talk about the ins and outs of the game. We can't sticky them all. That's why people read the forums.

 

[Ace]

I think this road trick is a cheat, period, and should be disallowed as a technique. Now that "everyone" is aware of the trick, it should not be hard to tell if a city is deliberately placed in a bad location "just to take advantage" of the trick. As long as a city is placed in a decent location and/or follows the "usual" pattern of city placement by the player its ok, but if a city is built in a bad location just to utilize the trick, ban it.

In other words, If you luck out and the exact spot required for a station city just happens to be in the middle of 4 resource hexes or the exact spot you would normally place a city, great, but if you sitick a city on top of a mountain just one hex outside your city radius.....its a cheat. (This should not be a factor for the folks who practice ICS, because their cities are everywhere)

IMHO, This trick does not seem much different than the "airbase" or "FCT" tricks which are considered cheats in GOTM play. If the GOTM rules disallow the airbase trick "because it makes it easier to improve a hex and gives more resources than regular settler/engineer work", saving the building 10-15 road hexes with a settler should also be disallowed!

As a last comment, the "rules of the game" say specifically that in order to receive the trade bonus, the two cities must be connected by a road or railroad. If a programing bug allows a way around this, it is still not in accordance with the rules. At least, food caravan/freight is covered in the rules including the fact that two freight going in opposite directions cancel each other out. And since the programers set the max city size at 127 or so, they must have believed someone would spend the effort to build a city that big with food loads.

 

[Smash]

This is pretty advanced stuff and not really something to worry about.If you wish to play the game as a scientist/mathematician,then so be it.Really only useful in early landing attempts.An early landing civ will not score well in GotM formula.

 

[Boli]

Point 1: City building in bad locations can be highly profitable in game play terms not in trade arrows. i.e. I usually like to play where I cover every available space of my territory with cities because:

- This stops the enemy settling/wandering into the spaces left
- Because the city sqaures will overlap it is useful to shove a small cities in gap with SDI defences, if you plan it right you can have a small city - on a mountain - with city wall stocked up with mech. infantry and stealth figters covering the defence for four large sparly sububand cities
- Those small cities make perfect forts for your troops... expensive but VERY useful.

So If I have a size 4 city at the end because it is built on a mountain, next to plain which just happens to be on the route I do not to be disqualified for it... (plus it is hard to say what I built the city for, if it has just been built.)

Point 2: The game designers set the limit at 127 because of computer programing limitations. they could have forced it to 63, but I've had a city on pop 70 without cheating. (one game I send every city which had an "odd" surplus to the capital.. I had a lot of cities.

Point 3: Airbases, surrounding your landmass with airbases is a good defense against nukes... e.g. give your outer cities SDI and complete the rest of the coast with airbases I prefer to think of them as a enargy shield which grounds air units. (heck you are on future tech by the time you start trying to defend extensivity against a nuclear attack.)


Point 4: If a good explansion to WHY and HOW a "cheat" is used then I see no reason not to include it. (apart from going back in time and producing something out of nothing). Like my airbases uses as an enargy sheild, scouting missiles are like the unmanded spy planes used today and of course you can have two people working on the same job at once (engineer stack... why would anyone want to ban that one... perfect for building a quick railroad to the enmies capital )

Actually the biggest cheat of them all is the switching the building production... in fact in one of my games nearlly all my later wonders, somehow had the same foundation.. thank of JS Bach Catherdral... though finshing people who would agree to that would be stupid... so we would just have to admit that everyone cheats.

 

[ElephantU]

This "technique" does not just shorten the amount of road/rail you need to build. One of the common problems of keeping the road/rail trade bonus each turn is that other players units parked on the line cancel the bonus (unless they are allied, I am told). By shortening the length of the line you greatly shorten the probability of interference.

The disallowed cheats are posted on the rules page for the GOTM off the main site.

There are tons of threads that talk about the ins and outs of the game. We can't sticky them all. That's why people read the forums.

The thread I was specifically referring to is the one by Starlifter, "GOTM Techniques, Cheats, Rules & Discussion Thread" which summarizes all the do's and don'ts and includes valuable discussion and explanation. The statement on the GOTM Rules page is too simplified, particularly for new players to understand.

 

[ferenginar]

In my experience if you don't have a road or preferably rail link to distant destination cities, then by the time the caravan arrives then the demand has changed anyway. It seems to me that this one is not worth the effort.

ferenginar (why has my number of posts gone down?)

 

[Duke of Marlbrough]

With this, you would normally still build a road, just that it doesn't have to be the 'correct' road to get the trade bonus.

Your posts may have gone down if you posted in the RPG forum in the Civ 3 Demo Game. TF made those posts no longer count towards post totals.

 

[ElephantU]

Predicting destination city demand ahead of time is the subject of an active thread in the Strategy forum over on Apolyton.Net. Major breakthroughs have been posted recently.

What this "technique" does is obviate the need to build a full road/rail while still getting the bonus and greatly shortening the length of line subject to enemy interference.

In late game with SuperHighways this can be a big bonus. In GOTM21 I built a rail to the Celt capital that pushed my per-turn trade arrows for just one route from around 17 to around 26, but it kept dropping back whenever the Celts put a guard on the line. I can see a way to take BIG advantage of this in GOTM22, because of the bottleneck between the Germans and the Celts and Americans. Lots of German cities would find this to be the critical path. I have not tried it yet (despite how badly I'm doing) but a dozen cities jumping 5-10 trade arrows each is a BIG benefit.

(I hope that was vague enough not to give away the GOTM but specific enough to illustrate the potential...)

 

[Marlos]

I agree with Smash on this one. You guys can annihilate me in the GOTM by exploiting this if you like. I just enjoy playing the game.

 

[Ace]

Yes, Smash is right. Its way too much calculation for the gain.

By Boli:
Point 3: Airbases, surrounding your landmass with airbases is a good defense against nukes...

Ah, NO! unless your playing multiplayer with 6 other humans, airbases have no effect on AI nukes. The AI nukes "magically" appear at the city it wants to hit, and even a triple ring of airbases will not stop the nuke.

 

[Boli]

Hmmm... should stop playing too much Multiplayer, gettiong out of touch with one player mode; curse the LAN!

 

[Ali Ardavan]

I also think this is a cheat, just like Airbases and Food Caravans. I wish these bugs could be fixed.

But I voted yes, because the game is for fun and adding a lot of "disallowed techniques" would diminish that especially for new players.

 

[Old n Slow]

Maybe the questions should be rephrased -- should this be disallowed? -- No because it is more difficult to “police” that the FCT & airbase activity.

a) Those with extreme ICS developments will most likely have station cities anyway

b) Sometimes a hut may give you a station city

c) Those with serious trade gains use boat chains with oversea destinations -- does the station city apply in those cases?

As such, I think that this ‘quirk’ has minor to moderate effects, is nice to know for those special occasions (Thanks Duke for sharing), but does not imbalance play -- in fact, there is still an incentive to complete the road/railroad to facilitate successful trade in a timely fashion. (faster delivery =>faster arrival, tech discovery as well as reduced chance of bad things on the road (barbs, sneak attacks).