What should we consider exploits in Civ5?

[humbe]

I don't think that would encourage us to incorporate it. Our Civ4 mods made minimal changes to the standard game play, and I see no reason to change that.

The BTS mod was based on BUG - "BtS Unaltered Gameplay". We aim to provide a competition *between human players*, as far as possible using the software as supplied. The software, the map, and the starting conditions provide a common playing field. You are not competing with the AI when you play a GOTM.

While I do agree that the GOTM competition should be as close to standard civ as possible, I don't like stuff that encourages a lot of micro management. It's not a good if you are not competative unless you use most your game time micro managing stuff only to abuse some game mechanics that are overpowered enough that it makes a big difference.

But hopefully the game itself will include fixes for such situations. They are obviously not what the game designers wanted.

 

[MadDjinn]

But hopefully the game itself will include fixes for such situations. They are obviously not what the game designers wanted.

Why do people who dislike some part of the game go there?

You know that this is a really poor choice of words right?

Chances of you 'knowing' what the designers wanted == none. Chances the developers put some of these mechanics into the game == yes.

thanks for the though.

 

[Tabarnak]

The obvious most come from the manual itself. It's obvious since the release of the game...We all know that it was not intended. Nobody would have put this if they had more time to think about impacts of gameplay. Devs probably put this thing in a hurry and have not developped a better idea yet. I hope for a change for a next patch or a future expansion.

 

[MadDjinn]

The obvious most come from the manual itself. It's obvious since the release of the game...We all know that it was not intended. Nobody would have put this if they had more time to think about impacts of gameplay. Devs probably put this thing in a hurry and have not developped a better idea yet. I hope for a change for a next patch or a future expansion.

really? have you read a manual that actually aligned to the program or game perfectly?

'we all know' just means you're showing how poor your argument is. "Nobody would have done that"? really? So the people who had put in tech trading in Civ 4 *obviously* wouldn't have put this into the game? They had four years! This is what they chose.

A change could occur, sure, but it's not because the mechanic 'wasn't intended'. You've 0 proof for that.

 

[Tabarnak]

Are you saying that they are dumb?(like the AI)

Well you are right.

We received a poorly bad design and overpowered system in the name of ''RA blocking'' and you accept that? For hardcore players this is not acceptable.

For civ5 it's even worse than civ4 because you can entirely legitimate on what you can do and receive from the blocking system. From a RA, if you get Astronomy, the other civ can get a lot worse. Try to trade Astro for horsebackriding in civ4 just for fun...at least the AI trade almost beakers for beakers. But, both systems have no limits, letting the human player to create chain reactions.

For balance sake, limits are needed. Another fail. I don't understand seriously what they had in mind...what is so complicated?

Thallasicus can tell a lot about this....

 

[MadDjinn]

Are you saying that they are dumb?(like the AI)

Well you are right.

For balance sake, limits are needed. Another fail. I don't understand seriously what they had in mind...what is so complicated?

Thallasicus can tell a lot about this....

I'm not saying 'they' are dumb.

The game has balance issues for sure, but when you fall into believing what you've been saying, well...

 

[leif erikson]

Think that MadDjinn's point is simply that we cannot discern what the intentions of the game designers were. We can say that we think Civ5 lacks balance in certain areas and there may be actions we can take to minimize those imbalances, but we are guessing for sure on issues of design and what was, or was not, supposed to be.

Unless one of the design team post and tell us.

 

[tommynt]

We received a poorly bad design and overpowered system in the name of ''RA blocking''

Maybe just stop it, without blocking RAs are TOTALY useless, no1 whos is right in his mind d spend lot of gold to get some randoms "useless" tech 30 turns later. Why u think good finish times are possible without RAs at all? Cause RAs are op?

The real unbalancing thing in civ5 is dumb AI (and the poor trade system coming from that), maybe trash designers for it instead of a mechanic favouring good gameplay.

Just think about all the crying if RA d really give random techs like ones few turns from finishing, or real cheap ones u just wasnt interested to tech yet. No1 d ever sign RA then.

 

[leif erikson]

Maybe just stop it, without blocking RAs are TOTALY useless, no1 whos is right in his mind d spend lot of gold to get some randoms "useless" tech 30 turns later. Why u think good finish times are possible without RAs at all? Cause RAs are op?

The real unbalancing thing in civ5 is dumb AI (and the poor trade system coming from that), maybe trash designers for it instead of a mechanic favouring good gameplay.

Just think about all the crying if RA d really give random techs like ones few turns from finishing, or real cheap ones u just wasnt interested to tech yet. No1 d ever sign RA then.

Perhaps you should stop it and give reasons why your opinions are superior to others, without trashing other posters?

For some small amount of gold and 30 turns, not sure you should receive a tech worth much, much more than that? Not sure that I see this as superior to tech trading.

 

[Tabarnak]

Maybe just stop it, without blocking RAs are TOTALY useless, no1 whos is right in his mind d spend lot of gold to get some randoms "useless" tech 30 turns later. Why u think good finish times are possible without RAs at all? Cause RAs are op?

The real unbalancing thing in civ5 is dumb AI (and the poor trade system coming from that), maybe trash designers for it instead of a mechanic favouring good gameplay.

Just think about all the crying if RA d really give random techs like ones few turns from finishing, or real cheap ones u just wasnt interested to tech yet. No1 d ever sign RA then.

Exactly. RAs are useless if no blocking. I said that many times. That's why an entirely better system is needed. In this GOTM, we were pretty isolated. Add some AIs on the continent(bigger i assume) and you can be sure that Dave, Neuro, yourself, myself and al can finish under 170 turns. Again, i repeat, RA chaining is directly related to AIs gold. This is why it's a fail! AIs gold flooding act independently from a game to another, and for the same map! Resulting in an unbalanced feature....

So you are right...maybe just stop it(RAs).

Perhaps you should stop it and give reasons why your opinions are superior to others, without trashing other posters?

For some small amount of gold and 30 turns, not sure you should receive a tech worth much, much more than that? Not sure that I see this as superior to tech trading.

I don't see any trashing here. I've seen a lot worse. Tech trading and RAs have big flaws in the ''free for all'' system that can abuse experimented players.

 

[Neuro]

Perhaps you should stop it and give reasons why your opinions are superior to others, without trashing other posters?

For some small amount of gold and 30 turns, not sure you should receive a tech worth much, much more than that? Not sure that I see this as superior to tech trading.

It's actually much worse than tech trading. Tech trading can never give you a tech more advanced than the tech leader has, unlike RAs which can push you deep into the tech tree.

Being able to block techs is the real issue, but since there's no way to enforce a "no tech blocking" rule, we're stuck with RAs.

 

[Ribannah]

I think a research agreement should simply give science/turn for gold/turn, with a small bonus from what the other party invests.

For instance:

(1) You can agree to each spend 25% of your per-turn net income (if positive) for a duration of 30 turns. I.e., you can only have 4 agreements running at any one time, it pays to keep rivals in the game, and a premature end to an agreement is not so devastating.

(2) For the invested gold per turn, you get an equal amount of science per turn, plus a bonus that is a percentage of what the other party gets from their investment. All before multipliers, so it is advantageous to build science buildings, too.

(3) This bonus diminishes with how far ahead you are compared to the other party. If you research something they already know, the bonus is 20%, if it is one discovery away to them, it is 15%, etc. As a consequence, if you are somewhat behind you can catch up (and should do so quickly, before you fall too far behind), whereas currently the RA tends to increase the difference.

(4) Some buildings, wonders, policies or civilizations may produce higher bonuses.

(5) There can be scientific city states.

 

[ButSam]

The main problems I see with RAs are:

1) They carry the largest average benefit for the tech leader, and
2) Tech blocking

(That is, the tech leader gets more beakers for free on average than anyone else, if no tech blocking; tech blocking can be used to try to get even more.)

The AI doesn't *appear* to use tech blocking, either, although it is hard to know for sure. So that means an AI-to-AI RA advances the tech leader out of the pair further than other party but they both spend the same amount in gold; AI-to-human is either the same effect or the human tech blocks to try to get more bang for the buck.

I think an RA should contribute raw science after a set number of turns, or gradually increasing science per turn...some reward for duration but not a runaway for the leader -- both sides benefit equally in raw science beakers.

 

[Farrapo]

This is probably not the right thread to make game change suggestions, but I like Ribannah's ideas above. I have been an advocate for replacing the current RA scheme with one that conveys to both partners in an RA an increase in the velocity of scientific discovery for the duration of the RA. That would eliminate RA blocking since no specific techs would be awarded and would lead people to experiment with the optimal deployment of gold in varying game situations and approaches. I would think a similar thing could be done for culture via a CA.

 

[Airey]

There has to be a distinctive difference between GOTM and HoF forum.
GOTM, seems to be, is designed to be a learning experience.
However, as long as there's a "competition" set to the fastest win date, there will be endless opinions of who considers what "exploits." RAs, in it's current state, will always generate fastest win. Some people thinks micro is fun, some don't. That's not the point.

I don't think that would encourage us to incorporate it. Our Civ4 mods made minimal changes to the standard game play, and I see no reason to change that.

Unaltered game play is great.

If people don't want to use certain "exploits," then just don't. With all due respect, it's weird seeing write-ups that starts with not an advocate for RA and 2 or 3 lines in, the whole strategy is RA based.

What's fun about GOTM is seeing how many different approaches there are.
But recently, there's seems to be 1 cookie cutter way and everyone's game looks the same. I don't have good suggestions. But rather than discussing what is an exploits, maybe work towards to facilitating the basics: when to expand, how to plan Social Policies, offensive unit or defensive war...etc.