The Mechanics of Overflow Inflation

[Cromagnus]

You can hit Education before t90 without this exploit with both the Maya and Babylon. I think t80 even. Not disagreeing with you here, but in one of my test runs with the Maya, I hit t92 Education without bulbing a GS... purely from pyramids, libraries, early NC & trade routes.

But, agreed, it definitely blows the game wide open. Now would be the time to get those Deity achievements that people still don't have.

I think where it's really broken is with Scholars in Residence allowing you to complete the whole tech tree by t200 without universities...

I'm hoping that if we keep posting about it, the devs will notice and fix it. In the meantime, I'm enjoying playing Atomic Era units in 1000 AD.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

I'm hoping that if we keep posting about it, the devs will notice and fix it. In the meantime, I'm enjoying playing Atomic Era units in 1000 AD.

well, if OP is correct this has been around since GnK so im not holding my breath. my guess is someone needs to make a big stink about this at 2k/firaxis forums to get any attention. they dont hang out here, afaik.

 

[Cromagnus]

You're probably right, but civfanatics is so much cooler than the 2k forums... they should hang out here.

 

[vale]

well, if OP is correct this has been around since GnK so im not holding my breath. my guess is someone needs to make a big stink about this at 2k/firaxis forums to get any attention. they dont hang out here, afaik.

Well they may not have been aware of the issue. Back in Civ IV: BTS days, there was an overflow hammer exploit that was much less powerful than this that had been around since vanilla. They patched it once the mechanic began to get well known here.

 

[Cromagnus]

Which is one reason why I'm trying to find the most dramatic way to exploit this. A screenshot is worth a thousand words. Artillery in 350AD, Tanks in 1000AD, what should I go for next? Maybe I'll see how early one can get Giant Death Robots. I believe I can do it by 1500AD. That would be a great screenshot, with a caption like "Diety. GDR vs Muskets. Devs please fix this."

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

Well they may not have been aware of the issue. Back in Civ IV: BTS days, there was an overflow hammer exploit that was much less powerful than this that had been around since vanilla. They patched it once the mechanic began to get well known here.

maybe so. we werent aware of this until a week ago. i just perused the 2k forums pages for Civ5. wasnt really deep with a lot of subforums and i didnt see any of this discussion on the first page of topics of any of the subforums. i think their general discussions forum had ~70 viewing when i went there.

 

[Cromagnus]

I'll post a screenshot once I have something really dramatic. t129 artillery is only like 10 turns faster than what you could achieve without the exploit. I want something more dramatic to show. That's why I'm working on the double bulb trick to get early Printing Press, in the hopes that I can hit Future Tech at some ridiculously early turn. It still won't be easy... the main issue is the sheer number of turns. There are 50 techs after Education + Printing Press. If I have those two by t100, I can probably squeeze out Acoustics, Banking, Economics, Architecture and Scientific Theory by t130, via Secularism & Universities. Hard-build Pisa, burn the Long Count GE to get Porcelain Tower, sign 6 RAs... that maybe gets you 4 more techs by t130. MAYBE. That still means not hitting Future tech until t171. Another wave of RAs would reduce the final bulbing by 5-6 turns, so now you're maybe looking at the full tree done by t165.

I think dropping a screenshot showing "Researching Future Tech" on t165 on the 2k forums should start an uproar.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

I think dropping a screenshot showing "Researching Future Tech" on t165 on the 2k forums should start an uproar.

yeah, but the naysayers would scream "hacked" or "photoshopped" or whatever, haha.

honestly, a link to Moriarte's video on it should be enough. it's only 45 minutes long and is uproarious enough. if anyone here already has a 2k account (and familiar with their forum guidelines) someone should do that. i dont know if they frown on linking to other fan sites but they definitely link to youtube a lot there. they had a Let's Play thread that was heavily moderated for excessive video posting though.

 

[Evil4Zerggin]

well, if OP is correct this has been around since GnK so im not holding my breath. my guess is someone needs to make a big stink about this at 2k/firaxis forums to get any attention. they dont hang out here, afaik.

Why is there a Bug Reports subforum here then?

 

[Cromagnus]

Why is there a Bug Reports subforum here then?

Wishful thinking?

 

[Cromagnus]

Looks like someone already made the post.

 

[kaspergm]

"Overflow Inflation" is a phenominon that,when you begin to research a new technology(name it "T"),all beakers accumulated but unused before(called"overflow") will automatically multiplied due to other players' discovery OF T,before they are spent in T.

CurrentBeakers=beakers you get this turn + overflow*(1+0.3*number of players that have discovered T/number of players alive)*1.2(If T is discovered by at least one player and "Scholar in Residence"proposal is in place)

eg:you are researching sailing,which has been discovered by all other 7 players.Your overflow is 30,00 and your current research is 100.The Scholar in Residence proposal is not in place.
So,your currentbeakers are:
Currentbeakers=3000*(1+0.3*7/8)+100=3787
beakers spent on sailing are:
beakersneeded=65/(1+0.3*7/8)=51
So,you discovered fishing in one turn,and the beakers left is:
newoverflow=3787-51=3736

Interesting thread. However, I hope you can explain something to me which I can't make sense of.

In the line I've highlighted with green colour, you say Current Beakers is calculated as bpt PLUS overflow and then multiply this (which would be only the overflow that multiplies into the parenthesis - or no?) with the factors from modifiers.

However, in the example line I've highlighted with red, you use a multiply factor of 3000, which would seem to be your bpt MULTIPLIED BY overflow - i.e. you multiply by 30*100 instead of 30+100 as would be indicated by the green line code.

So which of these lines are true?

 

[Light Cleric]

Interesting thread. However, I hope you can explain something to me which I can't make sense of.

In the line I've highlighted with green colour, you say Current Beakers is calculated as bpt PLUS overflow and then multiply this (which would be only the overflow that multiplies into the parenthesis - or no?) with the factors from modifiers.

However, in the example line I've highlighted with red, you use a multiply factor of 3000, which would seem to be your bpt MULTIPLIED BY overflow - i.e. you multiply by 30*100 instead of 30+100 as would be indicated by the green line code.

So which of these lines are true?

I think what happened is he just placed the +bpt in a different place in the formula with the +100 at the end(which didn't change the outcome but looks different). Remember because of order of operations the beakers per turn and overflow are not added together until after the overflow is multiplied by the stuff in parenthesis so where wrote the addition didn't matter.

The 3000 was not calculated but rather just an arbitrary example number of overflow.

 

[kaspergm]

Ah I see, thanx.

 

[Buccaneer]

Anecdotally, I recall going from Vanilla to G&K (or was it to one of the big Vanilla patches?) that they put in beaker overflow because nearly everyone screamed that it needed to be in (but they never gave a reason why it needed to be in). A few of us noticed that one could get through the tech tree fairly quickly and beaker overflow would only accelerate that (if they did not drastically change the cost of techs). Don't remember how it ended up balanced after all but this sort of reminds me of the issues surrounding overflows, RAs and GS.

 

[ravenmagus]

Overflow itself is a good idea. But the overflow should not be getting multiplied. I'm not actually sure why it's multiplied at all - it should only lower the cost of the next tech and then apply your beakers to it.

 

[Laurwin]

I played a game with Babylon and did as much exploiting as possible. Turns out you don't need to be Babylon at all and that extra great scientist is a waste.

I saved my first Great Scientist, went for Education to get a few more, and then slow-teched my way through Architecture while I sent out diplomats to get Scholars in Residence passed.

When Scholars was ready, I was last place in tech by a fair margin: I had Architecture just completed, but no bronze working or sailing. I used one Great Scientist with 150 bpt, and that gave me enough science to research the entire tech tree and then get Future Tech 10 times before running out of beakers. Off of ONE scientist. I had two others prepared that sat around unused because they would have caused my beakers to overflow into negative.

aaah dude that's badass

I gotta try the same thing on king difficulty, hopefully it works, what was your techpath btw? How many cities in your empire? You had universities up and running when you bulbed?

You had sailing line, and the ironworking line unresearched?

Did you go essentially choose patronage policy for forbidden palace extra votes (in world congress) and CS influence?

 

[ravenmagus]

aaah dude that's badass

I gotta try the same thing on king difficulty, hopefully it works, what was your techpath btw? How many cities in your empire? You had universities up and running when you bulbed?

You had sailing line, and the ironworking line unresearched?

Did you go essentially choose patronage policy for forbidden palace extra votes (in world congress) and CS influence?

I had four cities. I went Liberty for the extra GS (which I didn't end up needing).

I picked up Mining near the start but otherwise beelined Education. After Education I went Guilds - Chivalry - Banking - Acoustics - Architecture. I did have universities up (generated a third, also unneeded, GS via GP points), as well as National College.

I had planned to bulb 1 turn before finishing Architecture, but it came a few turns too early - I wanted to wait for Scholars to pass - so I actually ended up bulbing at the end of Machinery instead. I had Sailing and Bronze Working unresearched. To get Scholars passed I sent my spy around as a diplomat to secure votes for it from friendly AIs.

You probably won't see as big a tech swing on King, because the AI will have fewer techs to increase overflow on ... but maybe using all three GS will make up for it
EDIT: I relied on the AI to research printing press for me too. That's going to happen a lot slower on King.

 

[Cromagnus]

The extra GS from Babylon is only a waste if you're waiting for scholars to pass. Babylon allows you to bulb before you could get a GS naturally, to hit the atomic era super early, or get all the medieval techs by t100, artillery by t125, flight by t140, etc., etc.

Waiting for Scholars gives you more free techs but it gives you them much, much later. Unless you're really lucky, you're not bulbing until t150-160, so you finish the tree on t200-210. Tradeoffs. You can finish the tree faster by getting plastics super-early and teching naturally. But that actually requires skill, whereas the scholars version does not. Scholars is definitely the "Deity is the new Settler" version of this exploit. ;-)

 

[Paszczak]

What's the point of super early Artillery or Tanks if it takes 30 turns to build one and you don't have enough at this point to rush buy even one? I can see people using this exploit for nice and easy science victory, but for domination that is not nearly as dramatic as y'all make it look. You can have all the in the world but if your and are tight domination is going to be a slow grind it normally is.