What should we consider as exploits?

[Knowtalent]

Why wasn't this allowed in 6OTM 3? Can whoever made that decision chime in?

I'd be fine either way, I think (subject to more convincing augments). But if allowed, it should be on a list of explicitly allowed actions.

Specifically to the RV the AI cant see that it will lose immediately upon accepting the gifted cities. Most AI end up with 5 to 8 cities. So killing a couple of civs will give you plenty of small cities to give to the last AI upon meeting them.

 

[mayhemster]

Have we got a decision yet on the Goddess of the Harvest bug? I used it in the Beta Gauntlet 2 seeing as we're using these games for testing as much as anything, I've just gone back to saves and done a chop for some numbers so you can see how insane it is - remember you can rush buy great people with faith.

T63 - 240 Faith - 6 cities

Spoiler :

T109 - 1110 Faith - 14 cities

Spoiler :

T157 - 2684 Faith - 22 cities

Spoiler :

T178 - 3916 Faith - 22 cities

Spoiler :

 

[leif erikson]

Have we got a decision yet on the Goddess of the Harvest bug? I used it in the Beta Gauntlet 2 seeing as we're using these games for testing as much as anything, I've just gone back to saves and done a chop for some numbers so you can see how insane it is - remember you can rush buy great people with faith.

Agree that we are still testing out Civ6 and its features. As I replied in the 6otM04 Announcement thread:

It may well be. As we are still discovering things about Civ6, perhaps some people should play using the strategy and let us see the results so we can decide? If you do, please offer an evaluation of its effect in your write up.

 

[mayhemster]

Cheers leif - I posted the saves and numbers above so you have some evidence of how powerful it is. I shaved 22 turns off my best science victory on a rubbish map with a weak civ as I could just rush all the great people all game without doing anything all that different - chopping woods and rainforests is something you want to be doing anyway but when you get this faith on top of the production yields then its really powerful.

 

[leif erikson]

Yes, it looks pretty much an exploit. Let's see what the power of it is in an actual GotM that we can compare with others.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Have we got a decision yet on the Goddess of the Harvest bug? I used it in the Beta Gauntlet 2 seeing as we're using these games for testing as much as anything, I've just gone back to saves and done a chop for some numbers so you can see how insane it is - remember you can rush buy great people with faith.

I played a very quick Deity Religious Victory game last night where I chose Goddess of the Harvest as one of my beliefs. I chopped a forest while having just two cities and I got twice (2x) the faith (132F) as hammers (66H) from the chop. It just gets worse as the number of cities one owns increases.

The chop/harvest hammer yield also increases with the proportion of the technology or civics tree completed. It ranges from 1x (no technologies/civics completed) to 10x (all technologies/civics completed). Base hammers for a forest chop is 20; I got 33H specifically for technology/civics advancement (1.65x). This increase is probably intended to help keep up with the increased cost of everything.

I was also playing online speed, and chops/harvest is not scaled to game speed, so I also got 2x more than appropriate, since online speed is twice as fast as standard speed. So the hammers due to this scaling error was doubled from 33H to 66H (actual amount). I don't consider this factor as especially unbalanced for online speed, since units obsolete twice as fast. It is nice to have something counter balancing this faster rate of obsolescence.

I would conclude that the Goddess of the Harvest belief is grossly unbalanced. Just removing the no. of cities multiplier may put it into adequate balance. Right now though, it is one of the most unbalanced areas of the game.

 

[Knowtalent]

This seems exploitive in just about any VC. Need more troops? chop. Need more Great works? chop. Need more Science? Chop! Need more apostles? CHOP!!!

 

[elitetroops]

Definitely a huge exploit in my opinion. The yields are so far out of line with any other Pantheon. For example, one of the strongest faith civs is considered to be Russia with Dance of the Aurora and some tundra Lavras. Compare this to:

T178 - 3916 Faith - 22 cities

That one chop yielded more faith than the Dance of the Aurora pantheon would give for 3 Lavras completely surrounded by tundra, using the double adjacency bonus policy, over 100 turns. And that also takes up a policy slot for 100 turns. If you look at the gains from DotA alone, you'd need 6 tundra Lavras for 109 turns to gain the same amount of faith.

Looking at the numbers posted by Mayhemster, I'd say every one of those chops alone gave as much or more faith than you could expect to get from any other pantheon up until that point of the game. And that's for single chops.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

It certainly seems overpowered and I can see why it will probably need to be banned, I'm slightly hesitant to call it an exploit when you are simply choosing an offered option within the game. Sematics perhaps but I think there is a difference.

 

[Browd]

Goddess of the Harvest is clearly bugged, and it should be regarded as an exploit to take deliberate advantage of a known bug. Once Firaxis fixes it (and hopefully they will), there will be no exploit.

 

[WillowBrook]

Goddess of the Harvest is clearly bugged, and it should be regarded as an exploit to take deliberate advantage of a known bug. Once Firaxis fixes it (and hopefully they will), there will be no exploit.

Bingo! It's supposed to be gone in today's patch.

 

[leif erikson]

Any one seen any patch notes? Please post them if you do.

edit - Patch Notes:

Spoiler :

Here are the full list of changes in this new update:

[NEW]

• Added Earth map (Standard size)
• Added “Alert” action for units
  • Put a unit to sleep until they spot an enemy unit
• Scenario setup menu
  • Jump into Scenarios more easily within the Single Player menu. This only shows up when a single player scenario is available and enabled (as can be found in both of the new DLCs!)
• Added new replay option to Wonder completion movies

[GAMEPLAY UPDATES]

• Religious units may now Fortify Until Healed
• Coastal Raids can now pillage districts in addition to the buildings within
• Great Admirals are no longer allowed to spawn on wonders in water tiles (ex. Huey, Great Lighthouse) so they cannot become stranded in lakes

[BALANCE CHANGES]

• Cities can no longer receive yields from more than one regional building per type; they take the highest (ex. production from multiple Factories)
• Cities can no longer receive amenities from more than one regional building per type; they take the highest (ex. amenities from multiple Stadiums)
• Decreased production costs of Wonders progressively
  • From the Industrial era (about -10%) to the Atomic era (about -40%).
• Decreased production costs of all Space Race Projects by 40%.
• Increased research costs of Technologies and Civics progressively
  • From the Industrial era (about +5%) to the Information era (about +20%).
• Increased Faith from Mission
• Increased Culture from Chateau
• Lowered the minimum unit upgrade cost
• Improved clarity on Warmongering penalties associated with taking a civ’s final city
• Most Civilization unique districts now require population to construct (like normal districts)
• Spaceport district no longer requires population to construct

[AI TUNING]

• Improved AI Deal negotiations and analysis
• Improved AI handling of Promises; including that they are more likely to agree if they like you, and also will consider how trustworthy a civ is by whether they’ve kept previous promises
• Improved tactical handling of Great Admirals and Great Generals
• Improved AI interest in Terracotta Army
• Improved handling of leaf techs
• Improved building of Forts
• Improved resource grabbing in late game
• Improved Last Viking King agenda’s analysis for who is in bottom percentage of navies
• Improved handling of several complaint or kudo messages from AI
• Rebalanced Catherine’s evaluation of the ‘no spying’ Promise
• AI will not try to convert unconvertible cities

[BUG FIXES]

• Fixed several unique buildings that weren’t getting their yields increased by various game effects (ex. Policies)
• Fixed an issue that allowed the Goddess of the Harvest pantheon bonus to stack
• Fixed it so loading screens now show the correct text and play matching VO
• Fixed an issue that blocked certain relationship-based diplomatic actions
• Fixed an issue where incomplete Encampment districts were able to attack
• Fixed an issue where you could declare war on friends or allies by moving units
• Fixed an issue where AI could declare war on a civ with whom they were already at war
• Fixed an issue that caused a Multiplayer lobby to require joining players to have Additional Content that wasn’t actually needed
• Fixed a bug that caused Apostles to run out of promotions
• Fixed a bug where gaining policy slots mid-turn could block progression
• Fixed issues caused by trading lots of Great Works at the same time
• Fixed an issue where turn timers weren’t loading correctly from a save
• Fixed an issue where Rome’s roads would connect to too many adjacent roads
• Fixed issue where civs could get another civ’s exclusive agenda
• Fixed multiple links to the Civilopedia
• Fixed issue that could cause menu music to play twice and overlap itself
• Fixed an issue that could cause private MP games to become public
• Fixed multiple text & grammatical issues
• Fixed multiple crashes

[VISUALS]

• Added new art for National Parks
• Updated Mines for several eras
• Updated Swordsman
• Improved city fading during combat

[MULTIPLAYER]

• Hallowed Ground scenario is no playable on huge maps
• VO now plays correctly when loading a save

[UI]

• Resource Report now correctly shows resources from several sources:
  • Great People abilities
  • Diplomatic Deals
• Checkboxes for toggle yields and grid now stay in sync with hotkeys
• Improved differentiation in Government Lens hex colors
• Added Defeat icon to the End Game Results screen

[AUDIO]

• Added sound effect for Quick Save hotkey

edit - Firaxis site with patch notes.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

"Fixed an issue that allowed the Goddess of the Harvest pantheon bonus to stack"

 

[hongyu20]

It seems you can give GPT to the AI and ask for a lump sum in return , something like 10 GPT for 100 gold or something , is this considered an exploit if you declare war the very next turn ? New to GOTM , sorry if this has been addressed before .

 

[leif erikson]

If a player intentionally trades GPT for lump sum gold and then declares war to break the deal, that would be considered an exploit.

That does not mean that trading GPT for Gold is banned, breaking the deal is the issue.

 

[hongyu20]

If a player intentionally trades GPT for lump sum gold and then declares war to break the deal, that would be considered an exploit.

That does not mean that trading GPT for Gold is banned, breaking the deal is the issue.

thanks a lot

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

About the GPT-Dealbreaker exploit (Trade gold for GPT, then declare war), I'd like to include resources too. Kinda a semantics issue, but it's good to remind people about that (and avoid misinterpretations).

Also, It'd be good to have a rough turn limit on that, or some conditions that allow someone to break this deal. For example, the AIs settling right in your face when their capitals are on another landmass. Maybe you'd be able to break the deal after, say, 15 turns and only if you have a casus belli?

 

[x2Madda]

If a player intentionally trades GPT for lump sum gold and then declares war to break the deal, that would be considered an exploit.

That does not mean that trading GPT for Gold is banned, breaking the deal is the issue.

I don't understand, we allowed it in Civ5 GOTM, why is Civ6 different?

 

[leif erikson]

Perhaps we should go back and review exploits for Civ5 then?

You do not see that as exploitive?

 

[x2Madda]

Perhaps we should go back and review exploits for Civ5 then?

You do not see that as exploitive?

It is a tough judgement call. We allowed it in Civ5 but then Firaxis patched it out, at least until you made friends with such a civ. Its not just about the gold though, its more a question of where do we draw the lines for example; Asking a civ to declare war on another civ and then stabbing them in the back is a civ staple (even the AI in alpha centuri would do it) but it is exploitative behavior without a doubt. Or Civ5 trading 1 horse/iron for 2gpt manually when under normal circumstances the AI would not do so.

In the past the main rule of thumb has been, 'is it so broken that it trivializes the game?' like the civ5 science overflow glitch/bug or the civ6 selling units for gold.
I don't think trading for gold (and then declaring war) is any more of a huge exploit in civ6 as it was in civ5 because in both games you can not make peace immediately to farm gold (therefore trivializing gpt) and even if we do ban it there is a larger issue/exploit in spies ability to steal gold. Civ6 has gone Civ:BE in that department and it is absolutely absurd how much gold you can steal from the AI!

Furthermore, with recent games being on Immortal, the AI magics gold out of thin air (nothing new) so stealing gold with a spy is almost like an infinite gold cheat. What were they thinking?!