What do you consider an exploit?

[Polycrates]

Soooooo....to answer what seems to have been the spirit of the original question, yeah there are a bunch of things I consider exploits when I play. I'm not interested in halls of fame or multiplayer or whatever and I couldn't give two figs whether everyone else wants to do these things, more power to you. For me, I feel like I'm exploiting with anything where I really feel I'm abusing a loophole in the mechanics of the game, or some aspect where the balance is way out of whack, rather than getting my advantage by doing stuff that's the smart thing for the ruler of a realm to do.

I'm only interested in singleplayer, and my holy grail would be an AI that's challenging with exactly the same advantages and penalties as the player; so I don't really have any interest in bumping the difficulty level way up and giving the AI enormous artificial advantages, and then trying to beat it by finding artificial advantages of my own. That just seems counterproductive and makes me feel a bit cheap when I do it, and not in a good scheming-Machiavellian-puppetmaster kind of way. I used to sometimes play Immortal level in Civ 4, and it was tremendously unfun because it was so glaringly obvious that the AI was playing a totally different game to me, and it was all about knowing the mechanics rather than anything you could reasonably pass off as exceptional kingship.

Anyway, so obviously stuff like researching one turn's worth of techs to guide research agreements fits into this (if it were up to me, I'd just give a random tech other than the one you're researching, and if you're indecisive enough to go around half-researching a whole bunch of techs then that's your own damn fault if your beakers get wasted). No pillaging my own stuff. No selling open borders unless I'm in between warring AIs. I limit myself to 3 RAs at a time (though I'd rather they were just more expensive...there's a mod for that which I should re-install).
I feel like AIs offer far too much for excess luxuries (even without the whole dow thing), especially as a lump sum and especially when they don't really need them anyway. But trading luxuries is still a fun mechanic, so I always do luxury trades for gold per turn. This has the added "advantage" that they seem not to offer quite as much total gold as they would for a lump sum.
I used to have things like a no-horseman-rush policy back in the early days when nothing else could compete with it, but I think they've patched up most of the gross imbalances.

Anyway that's what makes the game more fun for me, fortunately my list is getting shorter with each patch!

 

[RD-BH]

Exploit is about exploiting resources, no? I assume it doesn't mean exploit flaws in programming.

Uh, I would say deity games are all about exploiting the AI/game mechanics.
Are you saying there is another way to play deity?
I call that "designed to be exploited".

[EDIT]
My point:
1) I use a loophole to win.
2) Others scream "EXPLOIT!".
3) Devs alter game; removing loophole.
4) It still wasn't an exploit. I won according to existing rules.
... Changing the rules, changes the game.
... 3) is simply not the same game as 1).
... What was intended/stated by dev is irrelevant.
... If dev statements and intents are relevant,
... ... Where is +2g from tradeposts?
... ... Where is +1g from every resource?
5) You can't exploit a game designed to be exploited.
... You can play by the current set of rules.
... These rules are defined by:
... ... the most recent game version/release/patch/update.
[END_EDIT]

 

[swmaniac]

My opinions:

To me, if one secondary tactic (RA-blocking, for instance) completely overshadows what was intended as the main tactic (researching the tech), it needs to get patched. Also, if any one tactic completely breaks the game (essentially turning the game into: Do this, you win; Don't do this, you lose) - it needs to get fixed.

Selling Open Borders isn't an exploit, but I think the AI needs to be taught not to buy something they won't use (selling open borders to a civ that has no units anywhere near yours is not reasonable).

Selling Resources isn't an exploit, but I think the AI puts far too high a value on them.

Selling everything to an AI right before declaring war to get all their money is an exploit.

Rationale: It's taking advantage of a flaw in the computer. Any human being would see you offering to give them everything as "Too good to be true" and refuse, however the AI isn't designed to be distrustful in trading evidently. That needs to get fixed, as tricking the AI should not be that easy.

However, I will point out that in my opinion at least, exploiting isn't neccessarily a bad thing.

The computer cheats, so we have to do the same in turn. That's how you win the game.

 

[Tabarnak]

Selling everything to an AI right before declaring war to get all their money is an exploit.

I think the same. An easy way to counter this is to not let AI or player getting an amount of gold from lux but only gpt. More you stay at peace, more you get gold.

-This also makes the game harder and cuts down luck factor(players getting rich AI in a game compared to other players getting poor AI).

-This annihilates the pillage and resell lux exploit as well.

-This also strenghen the AI in some way tho because he can keep more gold in his bank.

And RAs blocking must be erased and replaced by another type of research pact for a next patch/expansion. It's clearly the dominant strat for a large amount of type of victories/maps, but not related to player's skills at all.