two exploits id love to see closed.

[rysingsun]

1) first one is when i have about 5 cities left to conquer and i offer the country 500 gold per turn for four of his cities and a cease fire. then i immediately attack him to take the last city. shamelessly. and now i have all naturalized citizens in the 4 cities and full city improvements. shameless indeed.

2) declaring war during a right of passage. there are times when we simply dont care about reputation. the ability to take inner core cities AND pillage all the resources AND cut off the capital from its (road) connections to leave the empire with ZERO resources and some lost cities is just too powerful for that tiny little reputation hit.

 

[Bartleby]

Of course in a single-player game it is entirely within your power to not do either of those things .

 

[sealman]

Bartleby is right. Just don't do it. And I would not call the second one a real exploit since there is an effect to your actions.

 

[dh_epic]

"Just don't do it" is a pretty crappy solution, if you ask me. That kind of approach to gameplay takes away the challenge of the game, and is one of the reasons I think that Civ's audience is having trouble expanding beyond its base.

 

[Bartleby]

I don't see any other solution. If it's possible to make a deal, it's also possible to renege on it. It is the responsibility of the human player to act within the spirit of the rules.

 

[warpstorm]

...and is one of the reasons I think that Civ's audience is having trouble expanding beyond its base.

I seriously doubt it. The reason why Civ has a hard time expanding is that it takes more than 15 minutes to get into and understand how to play. Many people don't have that kind of attention span when it comes to games.

One of the rules in game design is that the first 5 minutes that a player tries the game have to hook you. The Civ series for all it's good points fails there.

On topic, I don't really see those as exploits. They are just you breaking a deal. There are fairly harsh penalties (I find not being able to trade multi-turn or make diplomatic agreements for the rest of the game to be major) for it in the game already, but if you don't care about them...

Would you rather that no deal can ever be broken? I can see even bigger exploits on this end.

 

[timberwolf4545]

Breaking a Non-agression or peace treaty in this way could cause an automatic revolution where the people demand Fascism. See "Citizens influence a change in gov"
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=2148079#post2148079

 

[dh_epic]

Lots of people steal or borrow games instead of buying them, holding their money off until they're sure the game is something they really want to invest in.

It seems that rather than finding a balanced and fair way to cover up the exploits, the solution is "well, just make the AI produce and profit faster, so it outweighs the disadvantage of being a complete idiot in the face of an exploit". And this kind of AI experience gets old fast. Friends of mine who I've raved about Civ to, they got into it for a week, but then gave up when the competition became repetitive, stupid, and easily exploitable. In other words, for some people, Civilization isn't very replayable.

Not to say this is the only reason people would go sour on Civ, but it is *A* reason. (Looking around on the net, you'll see bunches of people who are like "why the heck do i have to walk this little dude around turn by turn? this game seems really pointless, i don't get it". Getting a more compelling start-up is a whole other discussion.)

At any rate, I think a better solution to this exploit would be some kind of internal reprocussion beyond the international reprocussions. Your people get mad at you: cultural pride goes down, anger goes up, you set a poor model for your citizens and they become more corrupt. Maybe even inhibit some of your international decisions, if only through war weariness. Nobody wants to think their government is unjust.

 

[Jon Shafer]

While yes, you can limit your own use of exploits, it should be up to the game to model the reasons not to. As dh has said, having some sort of internal as well as external effects would probably be the best solution. Sometimes you just don't have to care about your reputation (you're 5 times as big as everyone else, already a pariah and are completely self-sufficient), but there should still be penalties.

 

[ukrneal]

The Realms Beyond Civ group have a whole list of additional 'rules' that prohibit the use of exploits. Check them out if this is of interest to you.

 

[dh_epic]

I just hate the idea that I need to VOLUNTEER to make the game interesting. Why not just make the game interesting?

Imagine that in football, the team who gets first possession of the ball wins 90% of the time. The most important part of the game, then, becomes the initial coin toss. People get bored after one quarter. You do NOT improve the game by asking the winning team to voluntarily give up the ball. Forcing them to do it is not an improvement either. The solution is to balance the game, so first possession doesn't give you as much of an advtange.

If that analogy makes sense, the solution is NOT to ask Civ players to voluntarily be nice to other Civs, nor is it to force them to be nice to other civs. The solution is to balance the game, so betraying another Civ has a few more costs or a few less benefits.

 

[sealman]

dh-epic:

I understand your analogy and agree that there should be greater costs associated with ROP Rape and such but that still does not explain the situation with the two "exploits" listed here. In these examples, the best situation is just not to do it and it works just as well as imput some great lines of code into the game. I have never seen an AI do either of these two items. Sure I have seen ROP rapes by the AI but never to the extent were they pillage all my resources and cut off my capital on one turn.

 

[dh_epic]

Not sure what ROP rape is, but it sounds to me like your reasoning is "it's something the player can do, not the AI, so why complain?" I'd like to still do it, is my point, but to have it affect (even negatively) my empire and give me new problems to deal with. I'd like to watch the world and my empire truly evolve around these wretched decisions.

As of now, the game is lacking on strategy and depth.

 

[Jon Shafer]

If you want to use that philosophy then the player shouldn't be able to use the lux slider, make major amphibious invasions or use bombardment units.

Where are we now?

 

[Mewtarthio]

Right now, if you perform an RoP rape (that is, using a Right of Passage treaty to position your troops into the perfect position to slaughter your enemy's core cities) or make peace with an opponent only to kill him in the same turn, you will be unable to make any per-turn deals for the rest of the game (unless you agree to some ridiculously high costs). I think that you should suffer a severe drop in PR (I advocate a system in which the populations of countries have different opinions of other Civs, thus affecting your deals with them) and anyone should be able to cancel any agreements with you and even declare war with little or no diplomatic penalties.

 

[warpstorm]

Not sure what ROP rape is, but it sounds to me like your reasoning is "it's something the player can do, not the AI, so why complain?"

Oh, the AI can and does ROP-Rape you. It will do it fairly often in fact.

ROP-Rape is using a ROP to move your troops to a good striking position in the enemy country then declaring war.

 

[Milan's Warrior]

Sometimes you just don't have to care about your reputation (you're 5 times as big as everyone else, already a pariah and are completely self-sufficient)

Cough, Cough, but this is one respect in which the game is realistic. I would say that this is a case in which the game forsaw reality. Cough, Cough

 

[Jon Shafer]

Let's not bring politics into this.

In any case, there's a difference between what's going on these days and a country swallowing up civilization after civilization and nuking everyone they please.

 

[rcoutme]

I personally think that the 'correct' solution is to expand the Diplomacy options. Thus giving RoP corridors (i.e. you can traverse these squares but no others), having an option to attack any agressor units (violations of borders) without a declaration of war (or warning), and having bigger hits to reputation--but that reputation gets repaired over time.

 

[Milan's Warrior]

having an option to attack any agressor units (violations of borders) without a declaration of war (or warning)

I like this idea