Your rule of thumb for evaluating trade yields

[Kyro]

Oh cmon, for MP it's not banned and everyone uses it so it's fair there
For SP the only person I am cheating in a game it's not banned in is myself.
To me restarting is not fair then, as is using Pangea or Gilgamesh

You probably misunderstood what I meant by fair, I didn't mean it in a competitive context, I meant it the same way you would quote overpriced goods as "unfairly" priced and therefore cheating you of money. In the same sense exploits over reward players for the minimal skill and effort required to perform them and because of that devalue any other alternative that is fundamental to strategical depth and diversity.

Also you digress from the main point of contention which is: Do you really think any of those exploits listed are actually intended?

I can tell you from a design perspective they're absolutely not because they undermine what the game is altogether.

It is fallacy to assume anything that makes the player's life easier is considered cheating which is what you have implied, but I have already made it clear what is my definition of an exploit. The difference between Pangea and an Exploit/Cheat is that one is intended and the other is not. It's not that hard to draw the line, really. Pangea is "easier" for the same reason why the developers created the concept in the first place, so that you can interact with all players on a single landmass. That's an advantage/disadvantage simultaneously depending on how you play and who you play against. That makes it clearly not an exploit.

Also restarting is not cheating for the same reason you strive for the best odds within your control in any game that involves dice. Bettering your odds is a calculative and strategical decision and is part of risk assessment that you simply don't throw out of the window.

Boosted Production overflow from abusing policy cards need to go. Free Gold needs to go. There's no way to justify those in the game simply because they are the very epitome of what an exploit is.

Well, some clearly intended features of the game are arguably more imbalanced than chopping overflow and pre-placing districts. For example, capturing AI settlers, the 50% off unit upgrades, and city state bonuses generally (with two science city states, a bare campus starts with 8 science, better than library+univ... and compare Geneva's suzerain bonus to building Oxford; 15% to all cities vs 20% in one city).

It would be more logical for overflow hammers to take multiplier of current build rather than previous build, but if it's a bug, why did they not fix it?

Pre-placing districts is not completely free, you lose the tile yield and possibly adjacency bonuses, or you buy a tile. And after the first district you need to grow the pop to get another one. It's fine to say some min/maxing is detrimental to the simulation/immersion aspect of the game, but both perspectives have always been part of the Civ player base, so it would be hard to argue that one of them is unientended.

That is why there is a need to draw a line between what is an Exploit and what is simply an imbalanced aspect of the game. Again it goes back to intention. If you were the designer, would you have allowed that? If it was intended and its too powerful then it's a balancing issue. If it's not intended and it is overpowering in the game then it is an Exploit/Cheat.

Also just because the Devs haven't fixed it yet doesn't make it any less of an exploit. Developers make mistakes and loopholes in the game, they're not perfect and just because they don't fix something doesn't mean it is intended. It just means they have more pressing issues at hand.

The issue of exploits is not as subjective as some would try to claim it to be. I have given all the reasons why certain aspects of the game are considered exploits. If you disagree please prove:
a) Why you think that particular exploit is intended
b) How it does not limit strategical depth and diversity in the game

Developers will never include loopholes in the game on purpose, nor will they undermine their own design of the game by allowing one element in the game to render meaningless another. That's more than enough sense to determine whether something is an exploit or not.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Restarting the game can't be considered cheating, because it is basically conceding.

 

[Victoria]

Wow steady on. I hobble myself in games in a million ways, for a start I mainly play Victoria and Catherine because they do not get any start benefits. I do not play with what you call exploits every game. I'll play on settler sometimes... I really do not care about winning. Winning is overrated.

I see nothing wrong with doing what others do and I really hate the thought police trying to tell me what I should do.

 

[Spudsie74]

Opinions are like _________, everybody has one. That goes in spades for "cheating." How something a player does in a game where the difficulty level is ho much the AI cheats (gets extra stuff), is an interesting concept. Just for the record, I would call cheating something on using cheat codes that allow you to bypass the rules. Most of the exploits (or cheats) I read about seem, IMO more like "cheese." You can have a whole spectrum, from "No cheese," something along the lines of ironman play, to "full cheese," Gilglamesh with sequential restarts, anything to further the cause.

Except in MP mode, cheating (or cheese), is in the eye of the beholder.

Sorry, very off-topic, but I couldn't resist. I play (1800 hours) SP @ King/Emperor...with a touch of cheese.

 

[Archon_Wing]

It's always funny when one declares a bunch of things cheap.... except for the few similar things that they do /insert 5 pages of rationalization of why they are not the same.

Although to be fair, I think everyone does that to a degree. If your reasoning to me is that "It looks really cool", then I actually think that's a good enough reason to do something.

For example, I find the idea of re rolling til you find a superb start to be pretty cheesy. I don't think you can really call yourself an [x level] difficulty player if you can only win with cherry picked starts. I sometimes enjoy overpowered starts myself but you never know if that crap start actually has good surroundings and conceding on turn 1 makes little sense to me. After all, it is but 1 city and this game is more focused around wide anyways.... and especially since invading your neighbor for their potentially better capital works much better than it should. But then again, there are some maps where I discovered that the surroundings or terrain will lead to a grind and I don't play those, and I'm sure there are those that play every start to the bitter end would find that pretty lame too.... so don't throw rocks at glass houses? [unless you have a siege tower] And there are those that play ironman with no reload; which I am not willing to do either..... especially with the GP RNG near the end of the game.

And this is all sort of moot. It is highly unlikely that anyone is going to change the way they played just because they read a post online that denounced them because they failed to meet a certain agenda.

 

[Kyro]

Wow steady on. I hobble myself in games in a million ways, for a start I mainly play Victoria and Catherine because they do not get any start benefits. I do not play with what you call exploits every game. I'll play on settler sometimes... I really do not care about winning. Winning is overrated.

I see nothing wrong with doing what others do and I really hate the thought police trying to tell me what I should do.

No one is policing how you play. I'm just calling out exploits for what they are. Calling smoking bad for health isn't policing people who smoke. You can play any way you want. Just don't try to deny that exploits are not healthy for the game's existence and that's the only issue here.

@Archon_Wing
No one is throwing rocks, nothing here is personal. It's about the detrimental effect of exploits on gameplay depth and strategy and the objectivity in determining what is an exploit and what is not.

Nobody cares what exploit or cheese you use until you start bragging about how it is the best way to play the game. Then the gods display their nerf hammers.

 

[Archon_Wing]

@Archon_Wing
No one is throwing rocks, nothing here is personal. It's about the detrimental effect of exploits on gameplay depth and strategy and the objectivity in determining what is an exploit and what is not.

Nobody cares what exploit or cheese you use until you start bragging about how it is the best way to play the game. Then the gods display their nerf hammers.

Well, cheating got brought up, and that often has an emotional connotation, especially when it's frequently used interchangeably with exploit.

And while the topic of whether or not something is an exploit or not can be a pretty interesting discussion, but in terms of objectivity, as I had implied in one of my previous posts, I have a rather narrow definition of the term The concept of developer intention can certainly be inferred, but I also feel that people often project their own ideas of how a game should be and then pass it off as objectivity.

It is reasonable to suggest that the preplacing abuse is a detriment to gameplay and an exploit because it effectively allows the player to bypass cost (the loss of a tile and contribution to the district limit are practically irrelevant costs in practice), and thus watering down the strategy aspect of a strategy gameplay. All the other excess baggage, or even whether or not the developers cared for it or it was an oversight is honestly excess baggage and requires too much mind-reading for my taste.

Also keep in mind that sometimes unintended things can actually enhance gameplay in a manner never intended by the developers. So I like to also consider how it also interacts with other elements of the game too and perhaps stomping it out isn't the best solution either.

Oh btw, Carl Sagan being affected by production modifiers is pretty stupid.

 

[Disgustipated]

How do we really know they are exploits and not working as intended? These "exploits" are done using the game's own rules. Why have production bonus cards if we can't use them? I know you are complaining about the overflow, but we should get that overflow. We've complained about past games that don't have overflow. I also get overflow from Carl Sagan and can build a bunch of things afterwords. Big deal, the game is won by that point anyways.

 

[Victoria]

One of the ironies of the science victory is it is so long and boring and the chopping approach is more challenging and interesting that I would think Firaxis are fools to nerf these strategies while leaving such a boring victory condition in place. I agree it sort of breaks a reality persons view of the game but as a mechanics person I think its great.

Chopping is by no means straight forward and the choice of delaying one single chop by a few turns can be of benefits both ways and is not always that simple to resolve. What a great mechanic it turns out to be whether it be intentional or accidental. I used to say its bad but I'll use it if others are to say go for a shortest time victory.... now I think its great. Remove it and its a poorer game.

District placement is so so, its not as strong as chopping and if they could remove it I would not be that upset but all I am doing by using it is iproving my chances like @Kyro says

I come from New Zealand where people got given land in the early days for free on the condition that they deforest it.

 

[Softly]

Talking about "exploits/cheating" in a single player game is meaningless.

"Developer Intended" is a meaningless concept when a deity Macedonia Pangaea domination victory is easier to achieve than a king France island plates science victory.

 

[UWHabs]

One note about rerolling starts: I don't reroll to get an "ideal" start, but most of the time, if I'm going to sink multiple hours into a game, I may want to play it out one way vs another. So if I start a game and realize that I'm alone on an island, well, maybe I don't want to play an isolated game. Or if I want to play a Scythia game, yeah, while it might be a fun challenge to try one without horses, but that kind of defeats the purpose of playing her, right?

Early district placement locking in the cost to me feels like something the designers have accepted by now. It's been in and noted since basically day 1, and never even attempted to patch it out, so to me, it almost feels intentional. And as mentioned there are tradeoffs - once a district is locked in, you can't move it, you can't use the tile, and you can't change your mind to a different district. Sometimes you can't pre-place if you want to chop the forest first too. Yeah, you can abuse it by placing a district and then waiting 50 or 100 turns before actually starting it, but I think it's highly rare to pull off a strategy like that, and actually have it matter. So I have 100 cogs in my tundra city late-game. Not really a big deal.

The chop/multiplier overflow to me still feels like a bug, although I remember in previous versions we had the exact same problem and they did get around to fixing it. Of course, because there aren't a lot of multiplier cards, there aren't a lot of cases where you can really abuse this. The wall chop is the big one because by the time you get Monarchy, chops are worth way more than ancient walls, so being able to get a 150% bonus on them can be huge. Of course, even at that, you can still only abuse it once per city, since the next level of walls are expensive.

Of course, as mentioned, the only person I'm "cheating" by using these or any other exploits is myself. I mean, we're talking about a game that you can mod and adjust as much as you want. If I want to play a version where I get a tank on turn 1, I can do that. It's all about having fun, and if you derive pleasure from using any of these tactics, go ahead. If you derive pleasure from avoiding them, then avoid them.

 

[Archon_Wing]

One of the ironies of the science victory is it is so long and boring and the chopping approach is more challenging and interesting that I would think Firaxis are fools to nerf these strategies while leaving such a boring victory condition in place. I agree it sort of breaks a reality persons view of the game but as a mechanics person I think its great.

They should normalize the production costs of things for the later half the the game and nerf production cards then. I think those costs were intended with the old version of industrial zones, and with those gone, we have the same costs yet less ways of handling them. Space race is too dependent on the GPs, and you're also at a natural advantage if you manage to get Kwolek first and then Sagan, though I guess advanced play involves hoarding the gold to buy them all at once, but still.... consider that infantry has a 430 cost, while Big Ben is the cost of only several infantry.... Muskets cost about half as much as an infantry and I doubt production ability comes anywhere close to doubling during that time period. Sometimes it's a bad thing to tech too fast if you're in the middle of fighting, which I've circumvented by building a ton of warriors with Agoge back in the classical era (avoiding iron working of course) and upgrading them with gold as needed. It's kinda silly because basically these are the majority of my troops that I will ever build.

 

[PYITE]

I have no problem with the chop overflow because it's potentially a greater advantage to upper level difficulty AI. Deity gets 80% base bonus on every chop plus any policy card or government bonuses. I've seen the AI get early districts finished by one chop and then finish the level 1 building the next turn.

 

[Archon_Wing]

They could always just tone down the AI to balance things. The AI getting so many bonuses is a combination of flawed gameplay mechanics and it being terrible.

 

[Victoria]

Enlightening post, in that it makes it absurdly clear what is broken in the game. Personally, I consider pre-placing districts and exploiting overflow cards to be exploits, I never knowingly do neither.

The funny thing is I think I enjoy playing a long relaxing Emperor game without using these (and not chopping much)
Than when I play a speed finish game but I do also enjoy playing those and using whatever 'exploit' is allowed is part of that and make it also more interesting. I can see both sides of the argument but I really sit in the middle.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Personally, I don't mind the card exploit as much since I think microing cards is something intresting, though 100% is too powerful of a boost and modifiers also boosting chops is stupid. But the idea of overflowed production isn't exactly something the user pulled out of nowhere. They created a situation where they got extra production. And in all cases where you generate a lot of production ; say I use a GP engineer to boost my wonders, I can use the extra production for other things afterwards too.

On the other hand , preplacing districts is just an insanely dull amount of busy work, and preplacing neighborhoods and being paid for NOT doing anything is something I don't think contributes anything to gameplay. These are just mindless things you just remember to do, and effectively punishing a player for not doing it with a higher district cost. While at least when you're putting a card, you're trying to build say, walls faster, which makes monarchy and that card itself have a role it normally would have. and it's also compatible with just playing normally, essentially, everyone benefits from it even if they don't actively seek said exploit.

Thus I argue the severity of an exploit

And yes, I believe in allowing these things if they're cool enough. Sue me. The AI doesn't play fair anyways.

As a side note, I'm also pretty salty about science CS's too.They seem to make a huge difference and whether you encounter them early enough or not [or if they get conquered] is entirely a matter of luck. So sometimes I roll my eyes when basically a part of strategy essentially amounts to getting lucky.

 

[Victoria]

I'm also pretty salty about science CS's too

Or gold ones, they can make a crazy difference

 

[empresskiova]

Only popping in for a second here.

Regarding preplacing districts in general, I believe the costs lock in because they have to, not because they should or shouldn’t. If districts scaled during their construction then they would more than likely never complete, or at least take much much longer. This would also probably screw with the game, because each turn it would have to re-cost every developing district in the game. Units who become obsolete during training is a problem all it’s own, and is just a smaller example of this concept.

 

[Archon_Wing]

I really don't see the problem with that. It annoys me that a unit I was building takes twice as longer because it upgraded but I deal with that.

Seems like districts shouldn't scale at all and rather the whole system is too complicated for no benefit.

In practice it just makes cities founded after a certain point much less useful and the late game is considered boring anyways relatively speaking. Your core cities will have built the needed districts by then and they can produce districts in a few turns anyways.

Then people wouldn't go looking for stupid workarounds.

If they really want, make buildings scale, not districts.

 

[empresskiova]

It’d be nice if districts didn’t scale... or at least not as harshly lol. Cap it out at 200 or so production... but that’s a balance thing.