Top 3 Most Broken Exploits Currently (pre Fall patch)

[Aldrahill]

Civilization VI has a few pretty bad exploits.

Here are the Top 3 most horrendously OP exploits available to you right now to abuse the AI and your friends.

These are just what I've found from my few dozen hours so far into the newest Civ; I imagine they'll be fixed eventually, but until then, abuse!

EDIT: I would like to claim complete and total credit for all the exploits I mentioned in my video being fixed in the recent update.

Go me! I am clearly the harbinger of change.

 

[Aldrahill]

Oh damn, forgot to say - the first one is by far the most broken. Essentially unlimited money from the AI.

 

[Zuizgond]

The disbanding issue is so obvious that I can't believe it passed the QA.

Btw disbanding an unit should give 0 gold.

And AI deal mechanics are beyond broken. Are AAA companies no longer testing their game before release?

 

[fatgordy]

I was messing around with trading. The AI wanted to give me GPT and Open borders for one of my luxuries. I added open borders to my side of the deal and they suddenly wouldn't accept it. Then I removed everything and just added only open borders to my side of the deal with nothing on their side and they accepted it. Something's not working correctly.

 

[Jabulani]

The disbanding issue is so obvious that I can't believe it passed the QA.

Btw disbanding an unit should give 0 gold.

And AI deal mechanics are beyond broken. Are AAA companies no longer testing their game before release?

Sorry to say but unless many preordered, they have no reasons to test the game because customers pay to do that.

 

[elitetroops]

If you have enough to put on the table for the AI to consider selling cities, the trade bug can let you buy their cities for as low as 1 gold/turn. When I played around with this I had 3 deity AI sell me all cities but their capitals in the modern era at 1-6 gpt each.

The fact that the AI even considers trading cities for gpt is ridiculous.

 

[Aldrahill]

If you have enough to put on the table for the AI to consider selling cities, the trade bug can let you buy their cities for as low as 1 gold/turn. When I played around with this I had 3 deity AI sell me all cities but their capitals in the modern era at 1-6 gpt each.

The fact that the AI even considers trading cities for gpt is ridiculous.

Absolutely! It's so obscenely, crazily broken I have no idea how on earth this wasn't discovered in testing. Either they don't have a single QA person on staff, or it's intentional and lazy

 

[IronfighterXXX]

We also have good-known from Civ5 science overflow exploit, one guy using it got 99T deity science victory!

 

[RawlsRorty]

Absolutely! It's so obscenely, crazily broken I have no idea how on earth this wasn't discovered in testing. Either they don't have a single QA person on staff, or it's intentional and lazy

I've never worked in game development specifically, but I have worked on large software projects. As a result, I find comments like the above extremely frustrating.

First of all, every large software project will have bugs. Civ 6 has been relatively smooth-running as far as games go.

Second, the vast majority of QA time is spent finding massive bugs that cause crashes or the like. Logical edge-case errors like these slip through the cracks very easily.

Finally, there's the matter of scale. Assume that a game developer employs 20 QA testers who put in 40 hour weeks for 50 weeks a year. Assume also that the game is in a stable enough state for the final year of development to allow for a full year of QA testing. That means that the developers will have put in ~40,000 man-hours of QA testing into the game. Then imagine what happens when said game sells 700,00 copies in the first few weeks. There is no way that internal QA process can put in even a tiny fraction of the total play time the fanbase of a popular game will put in in the first month. Therefore, it is all but guaranteed that the player base will find bugs/exploits that the developers missed.

P.S.
I find it amusing that some claim these bugs were obvious when they found out about them on youtube or in the forums. What percentage of those complaining would have found any of these exploits on their own?

 

[SahintheFalcon]

I've never worked in game development specifically, but I have worked on large software projects. As a result, I find comments like the above extremely frustrating.

First of all, every large software project will have bugs. Civ 6 has been relatively smooth-running as far as games go.

Second, the vast majority of QA time is spent finding massive bugs that cause crashes or the like. Logical edge-case errors like these slip through the cracks very easily.

Finally, there's the matter of scale. Assume that a game developer employs 20 QA testers who put in 40 hour weeks for 50 weeks a year. Assume also that the game is in a stable enough state for the final year of development to allow for a full year of QA testing. That means that the developers will have put in ~40,000 man-hours of QA testing into the game. Then imagine what happens when said game sells 700,00 copies in the first few weeks. There is no way that internal QA process can put in even a tiny fraction of the total play time the fanbase of a popular game will put in in the first month. Therefore, it is all but guaranteed that the player base will find bugs/exploits that the developers missed.

P.S.
I find it amusing that some claim these bugs were obvious when they found out about them on youtube or in the forums. What percentage of those complaining would have found any of these exploits on their own?

This. Be happy at what works for now.

 

[IronfighterXXX]

Finally, there's the matter of scale. Assume that a game developer employs 20 QA testers who put in 40 hour weeks for 50 weeks a year. Assume also that the game is in a stable enough state for the final year of development to allow for a full year of QA testing. That means that the developers will have put in ~40,000 man-hours of QA testing into the game. Then imagine what happens when said game sells 700,00 copies in the first few weeks. There is no way that internal QA process can put in even a tiny fraction of the total play time the fanbase of a popular game will put in in the first month. Therefore, it is all but guaranteed that the player base will find bugs/exploits that the developers missed.
I find it amusing that some claim these bugs were obvious when they found out about them on youtube or in the forums. What percentage of those complaining would have found any of these exploits on their own?

Science overflow bug existed in Civ5, you do not need to be a genius to know that if you won't change how overflow works it will be still in Civ6.

 

[MyOtherName]

Therefore, it is all but guaranteed that the player base will find bugs/exploits that the developers missed.

The infuriating thing is that some of these bugs/exploits were found by the player base long before development even started on Civ 6. This does not appear to be "we didn't have enough man hours to find these things"; it appears to be "we ignored history, and were doomed to repeat it".

 

[redwings1340]

I find it amusing that some claim these bugs were obvious when they found out about them on youtube or in the forums. What percentage of those complaining would have found any of these exploits on their own?

Well, for me personally, by my fourth game or so I definitely noticed the trade screen was messed up and inconsistent, but I couldn't figure out how. I definitely would not have thought of the gold disbanding trick without realizing it from youtube, I recently was near bankruptcy in my game and disbanded a couple of 1 charge builders and outdated archers, and bam, suddenly I had so much money. It worked ridiculously well.

 

[Photi]

I was messing around with trading. The AI wanted to give me GPT and Open borders for one of my luxuries. I added open borders to my side of the deal and they suddenly wouldn't accept it. Then I removed everything and just added only open borders to my side of the deal with nothing on their side and they accepted it. Something's not working correctly.

i've noticed some weird stuff too trading resources with the AI. when they come to you with a deal offering X amount of gpt for a resource, if you try to expand the trade by adding one of their resources you want, and maybe suggest some other of your own resources they may want, at first they will usually quote an exorbitant price to you, if they accept the expanded trade at all. But then if you delete everything and start over, and this time only put in what you want, and then ask the AI what would it take to make the trade, they usually or maybe just sometimes list a much more reasonable price for the same trade they were asking much more for only a moment before.

 

[Big J Money]

Absolutely! It's so obscenely, crazily broken I have no idea how on earth this wasn't discovered in testing. Either they don't have a single QA person on staff, or it's intentional and lazy

Just because a bug or exploit is in the game doesn't mean QA failed to report it. It just means it didn't get fixed. There are a host of reasons that can be the case, especially if it's a bug that didn't start occurring until very late and they decided not to delay the game just to fix that one thing.

 

[Nathair]

Absolutely! It's so obscenely, crazily broken I have no idea how on earth this wasn't discovered in testing. Either they don't have a single QA person on staff, or it's intentional and lazy

Am I missing something here? It doesn't happen unless you make it happen, right? You have to actively take advantage of this in order for it to affect your games so... maybe just don't?

 

[MyOtherName]

Am I missing something here? It doesn't happen unless you make it happen, right? You have to actively take advantage of this in order for it to affect your games so... maybe just don't?

Those are just steps to reliably trigger the bug for maximum effect -- as far as I know any time I get a good deal in the trade screen, it's due to the bug.

I would like to be able trade with the AI.

 

[redwings1340]

Those are just steps to reliably trigger the bug for maximum effect -- as far as I know any time I get a good deal in the trade screen, it's due to the bug.

I would like to be able trade with the AI.

I really do wonder if they tried to have the AI negotiate, which created a more complicated deal screen program, and various bugs cause them to negotiate backwards sometimes. Not that I think having the AI negotiate is necessarily a good game design decision, I liked the simplicity of the BNW program, where you kind of had three levels of offers based on how the AI liked you (good offers, standard slightly skewed towards AI offers, and terrible offers). It wasn't incredible depth, but it worked and served its purpose. Here trading just feels weird.

 

[Aldrahill]

Am I missing something here? It doesn't happen unless you make it happen, right? You have to actively take advantage of this in order for it to affect your games so... maybe just don't?

They key thing is that this breaks multiplayer. When there are massive bugs that can create huge benefits for players over AI, any MP game featuring AI will create imbalances if one person wants to get ahead.

Hell, the Scythian one doesn't even need AI, they're just plain broken. The builder charges is another really obvious exploit that I worked out within 5 minutes of seeing the gold cost return from selling + that there were 3 charges per builder.

 

[Aldrahill]

I've never worked in game development specifically, but I have worked on large software projects. As a result, I find comments like the above extremely frustrating.

First of all, every large software project will have bugs. Civ 6 has been relatively smooth-running as far as games go.

Second, the vast majority of QA time is spent finding massive bugs that cause crashes or the like. Logical edge-case errors like these slip through the cracks very easily.

Finally, there's the matter of scale. Assume that a game developer employs 20 QA testers who put in 40 hour weeks for 50 weeks a year. Assume also that the game is in a stable enough state for the final year of development to allow for a full year of QA testing. That means that the developers will have put in ~40,000 man-hours of QA testing into the game. Then imagine what happens when said game sells 700,00 copies in the first few weeks. There is no way that internal QA process can put in even a tiny fraction of the total play time the fanbase of a popular game will put in in the first month. Therefore, it is all but guaranteed that the player base will find bugs/exploits that the developers missed.

P.S.
I find it amusing that some claim these bugs were obvious when they found out about them on youtube or in the forums. What percentage of those complaining would have found any of these exploits on their own?

I absolutely agree it's a matter of scale and can totally understand how priorities must be made. Hell, I honestly expect Civ to be broken at least slightly on release.

The problem *I* have with these exploits is they are not hard to do. The trade one is discoverable with 6 seconds of using the trade screen, the worker charge issue is simple maths and the Scythian production craziness... How did no one realise this? Fix it?

I agree with another poster that, most likely, these were all reported, just not fixed. Which then begs the question of what this company thinks of us that they release a knowingly bugged game (in many ways) because they know people will buy it and wait for patches?

All that aside, I honestly am loving the game HUGELY. Really enjoying it, I don't want a refund or even really want to complain too much. It's just... It feels a little insulting that a company would release a game with such glaring issues that, honestly, would not take that long to fix. The trade issue not withstanding of course, I imagine there's some bloody complicated problems there...