Epic Six - Sullla's Game

[Zeviz]

I understand that such discussions are unavoidable for a game as complicated as Civ4. However, it is very unpleasant for a player to live in fear of accidentally using a strategy that will spark a controversy about his game. So it would be good to have a list of guidelines and a guarantee that anything not on the list is ok to use, because any new strategy found to be overpowered will be added to the list as soon as it is reported. The problem with unwritten rules is that everybody has his own idea of what these rules are and we end up with these sorts of controversies after every event.

The rules can be just general guidelines (don’t start a war just to steal AI’s worker; don’t use Oracle or GP to discover Civil Service; etc.) I think most players can understand the spirit of such rules and play accordingly. The main thing is to have the ability to play the game without worrying about whether your strategy will be frowned upon. (If a new strategy is found to be overpowered, it would be nicer to congratulate the player for his creativity and start a separate discussion on whether to ban the strategy, rather than chastise the player for breaking unwritten rules and turning his thread into an argument.)

While I understand the desire to fix the best possible set of rules, even vague and unclear rules are better than “unwritten rules” that cause some report threads to turn into arguments about exploits. I might be mistaken, but I think it would be easier to give people benefit of doubt when they venture into grey area of an unclear rule, than it is to decide what is “an exploit” when the official exploits list is empty.

I prefer to see arguments about whether it was better to settle aggressively or to let Gandhi found more cities for you, instead of an argument about what constitutes an exploit.

[Compromise]

Sullla, I don't know if this is of any interest or not, but I figure I may as well make the comment. When I read your report and came to the part about putting the Archer near Delhi, I guess my reaction was not "Exploit!!! :badsulla: :bad:", but "now why would Sullla be interested in doing that?". My second reaction, after reading further, was "why didn't Sullla park a couple archers near one of Tokugawa's cities too?"

That's it.

I do think, however, that I have a sense of why you've been getting picked on 8) in the last few report threads. Your knowledge of the game's mechanics, attention to detail in your own play, and careful exposition of your thinking is such a service to anyone really interested in playing a better game of Civ 4. People who won't read anyone else's report will read yours because it's probably the most efficient use of their time if they want to play better. I think that's largely because your skill at the game let's you beat it so strongly without resorting to so-called "tricky" play.

And it's a strange judgment call too. Look at Epic 2 where the (only!) two players who got higher variant scores than you used the cheesy tactic of massively settling small islands to boost their "islands under control at the end of the game" subscore right at the end of the game.

But contrast that with Kylearan's brilliant "Nepotism Slingshot" in Epic 3. If that Epic were run again right now, would anyone try to do anything other than build the Oracle and grab Monarchy so as to run Hereditary Rule more quickly to get a high 0AD population count?

Why is one tactic "cheesy" and the other "brilliant"? Both would be used, say if the events were being run again and big money was at stake. I'm sure we could double the postcount in this or another thread by hashing it out exactly (and it seems like it would be along the lines of "obvious, only-applies-here, and game-prolonging" versus "clever! expedites this process, and maybe has application in other games. why didn't I think of that!"), but we probably don't need to. I can't describe it, but if anyone feels any twinges, they do seem to fall along the same lines in a kind of continuum of what's and exploit and what isn't. (I actually find the discussions interesting because it maps that continuum pretty well.)

Instead of reading about execution, even skilled, of tactics they already understand, people read yours, Kylearan's, Sirian's, Blake's, uberfish's, (and so many now-offended omittees :sorry: ) reports because they'd like to see the game they could have played if they'd been playing their best.

Like Epic 5 with your stable economy . (Now how exactly did he do that! I should reread that again and study it. I could apply that even in a game that didn't end so early....)

I wonder if you'd sent out 2 archers to Tokgawa and 3 archers to Saladin as soon as you could and suitably parked them (and if that had worked) if you'd now be getting accolades for extending the strangle-the-AI tactic to new levels, instead of getting lambasted for just using it like anybody else could/would/did.

For the love of Civ 4, don't stop writing reports Sullla! (Or playing SGs with us.) Our interest in playing/reporting/reading heavily depends on your interest in sharing your skill with us. I do think that we've come to expect from you--fairly or not--that you will help us play beyond, maybe way beyond, our present level. Even if only vicariously.

[Sirian]

I understand that such discussions are unavoidable for a game as complicated as Civ4.

There are two fundamental ways to go about this. Either:

A. One person writes the rules, everybody else lives with them, or:
B. Some degree of consensus must be formed through discussions, which naturally will include debates and some clashes of viewpoint.

We tried A with Civ3 and the community was almost destroyed by a raging bonfire over one player's disapproval of some rules. That damaged the tournament, as it effectively marked the end of evolving the rules, and actually led to most subsequent rules becoming unwritten rules. We also had a steady erosion factor from rules lawyering of various kinds. I have so far avoided both of these problems in Civ4 by not having any rules yet, but that honeymoon period is about to expire.

I appreciate the spirit in which your suggestions are offered, Zeviz. I wish it were that simple, but it isn't. I'm speaking now directly from experience, having been down this road before. Our players will just have to be patient as we work our way forward.


The notion that every effective strategy that comes along will be attacked is simply not correct.

It would be helpful, however, if all our players strive to put their focus on the GAME's problems and shortcomings, and not make any of this personal. This includes not dragging the developers in to it with assumptions about what took place during development, as well as not judging the morals of others based on how they play the game.

Also keep in mind that rules should be written only as needed. The Civ3 Exploits list balooned in part because certain players thought it was their duty to seek out and exploit every hole not already listed, forcing yet more and more holes to be closed by written rules, setting up an almost adversarial situation between rules makers and rules breakers. This is NOT desirable. Don't ask the rules to relieve you of the need to think things through and take responsibility for how you play. I suggest to anybody who does not immediately resonate to that last sentence to go back and reread the Welcome page and other intro pages to our site for additional clarity.


We all want positive feedback from our report efforts. We should keep that in mind as we comment on the reports of others. We should not need a rule to tell us to behave well in reply to others. Right?


- Sirian

[uberfish]

Well I don't think the CS slingshot is really the all-dominating opening you make it out to be for a few reasons.

- Pyramids-representation is just as strong. The pyramid builders did at least as well as the CS slingshotters in this event. The length of time you have in Representation that you wouldn't otherwise is much greater than that of Bureaucracy. Literally everyone playing a builder strat is building great library too, and it has better synergy with Pyramids.

- It's no guarantee on higher levels. The masonry-avoidance prophet version of the slingshot is a bit more reliable, but it's a relatively weak opening unless you have traits that reduce the opportunity cost of getting the prophet out early. I have played it and never been impressed with its performance compared to, say, just Axe/sword rushing the nearest opponent.

- Experts playing on low difficulty levels will rapidly get bored of just taking CS anyway, and start competing to grab the most expensive tech possible from the Oracle instead.

- Soooo has demonstrated twice now that given the right conditions, you can win conquests by doing nothing more than researching 4 techs and spamming out swords... surely that is a lot more degenerate than anything you could possibly do with the Oracle if people start adopting that approach instead?

[Sirian]

I wonder if you'd sent out 2 archers to Tokgawa and 3 archers to Saladin as soon as you could and suitably parked them (and if that had worked) if you'd now be getting accolades for extending the strangle-the-AI tactic to new levels...

Definitely not. We'd probably be roasting him alive.

Pillage-n-Park is not news to AW vets. It breaks the variant. This game was set an easy enough level not to need (or really even be tempted) to use it here. Whether or not we needed a rule against it would be clarified by the Epic Six results, and the jury is in. We need to rule it out. We also need to do something about Civil Service rushes and a couple of other holes.


Sulla is suffering criticism because he hasn't been shy about dishing it. Some of the folks he went after are ready to return the favor if he ventures in to similar territory, which he clearly did here. Competition sometimes leads to some trash talking, even amongst friends. This -could- escalate, but I should hope that our various community elders, at least, would choose wisely instead. There's nothing to gain down that road.

We've moving closer to adding some items to the Exploit List. That won't be the end of discussions either, but it should mark a waypoint past which some problems will disappear.

One item not going on to the list is tech trading stuff. I'll leave that alone, but I intend to turn tech trading off for an increasing ratio of games. I may also try some variant rules as experiments moving toward tournament rules.


- Sirian

[Sirian]

Well I don't think the CS slingshot is really the all-dominating opening you make it out to be for a few reasons.

There may be other holes as bad as this one, but this one is the one for which I have enough evidence to move forward to correct. We'll cross the other bridges as we come to them.


- Sirian

[sooooo]

Yep, it's very hard to build the pyramids and the oracle (taking CS) on anything above warlord. I'd certainly rather have the pyramids. On their own they are better than early beauraucracy, and with the great library they are ridiculous. Also, going for oracle means you're unlikely to have an early military campaign, a huge disadvantage and in fact I only go for it if I'm industrious (normally take metal casting). Industrious is the worst trait anyway, so it would be harsh to nerf it any more by banning the CS slingshot. I wouldn't say the CS slingshot is overpowered on any level.

EDITED to add: Oracle only gives you one tech. Pyramids gives you Monarchy, Constitution, Fascism and Democracy.

Uberfish also correctly points out that you can win any panagea map on certain levels and map sizes by just researching 4 techs. This takes no skill whatsoever (even I can manage it). I've done it twice in epics now and I'm never going to do it again, nor would I advise anyone else to try because it's not playing civ. You might as well type 1++ on a calculator and press the = button until you get to 100. I'm pretty certain this tactic doesn't need to be banned because anyone who tries it will throw their civ disc in the path of a corn harvester after a few attempts.

[Sirian]

You can win any panagea map on certain levels and map sizes by just researching 4 techs.

We'll see what the Epic Eight results are. The AI's vulnerability to attack prior to getting its own metals hooked up is no secret. There are half a dozen holes in the game associated with snuffing the AI in its cradle. We fixed or reduced the impact of as many as we could during development, with things such as giving Warriors city defense bonus and allowing Axe or Spear with either metal.

I'm not arguing that early Civil Service is the only problem, or even that it is the worst problem. However, that it -is- a problem seems indisputable to me.

Industrious is the worst trait anyway, so it would be harsh to nerf it any more by banning the CS slingshot.

Irrelevant to our environment. We don't need to balance the various options for tournament purposes. We need to balance the available pathways through the game, to expand the number of viable, competitive strategies.


- Sirian

[uberfish]

I'm not arguing that early Civil Service is the only problem, or even that it is the worst problem. However, that it -is- a problem seems indisputable to me.

Apparently not, since we're disputing it

It is clearly design intent that you can get Representation over two thousand years early, and the option to do so adds variety to the game; I imagine very few people would support banning Pyramids/Representation. I don't see how a few hundred years off Bureaucracy is overpowered. The direct oracle-CS slingshot is a huge resource investment, and if it misses you're stuck sitting on CoL which is a dead tech until you get more cities up. I would say the two are very comparable and both add positive options for players who want to choose a builder strategy (and you need powerful tools to stay competitive with the guy who invested those resources in early military and conquered a neighbour,) so there's no need to do anything to oracle-CS.

But I think your main issue is with Prophets lightbulbing CS anyway, right?

[Speaker]

Gandhi has one tile improvement, a mine on his gold resource, but that's the only one he will ever get. I pillaged it with my archer and then plopped my archer on the forest tile next to the city. For the rest of the game, he will never accomplish anything with his workers, just sit in his capital basically waiting for death to come. Now I can't actually TAKE the city anytime soon, but the beautiful thing is that I don't have to. Gandhi has been completely neutralized by the parking of this single archer. I will get around to finishing him off eventually, but for all intents and purposes he's basically done already.

And this is why I quickly lost interest in SP and will never really go back to it. The AI cannot deal with a single choking unit? 3 archers and yours is dead. But I suppose the AI will not attack when the odds are not in its favor? Even when it has 10 units to your 1.[/my bitching.]

Explorers might not be able to attack, but as anyone who's played a Multiplayer medieval-era start can tell you, they can cause some real headaches with the right promotions.

So true! At the start of a Medieval game, these things are impossible to kill! Especially if you can plop them on a forest hill, with the Woodsman + Guerrilla + natural land bonus, an explorer is defending at 4 + 115% = 8.6. Pretty hard to kill that with archers.

Great report as always Sullla!