Exploits

[Ellimist]

Production automation applying the same hammers for two different purposes is obviously a bug. Liberalism/Oracle giving more than one free technology is also a bug. These are not intended features, and deliberately using them is an exploit/cheating.

Fail gold is an intended feature of the game. Whether it was intended to apply if the same player builds the same wonder twice is open for debate, but the game designers implemented it that way. Making use of an intended game feature in an innovative way is not an exploit.

Most RB Civ games ban plenty of things that aren't cheating(for example: Spies, War Elephants). Deliberately producing fail gold can be addressed or not when other game rules are being discussed, but I see no point in even considering the use of the exploits mentioned above.

[T-hawk]

Yeah, it's the difference between a bug (game code not working as intended) and a weak spot in the design. I don't see any need to ban it; TMIT and others point out that the opportunity cost and delayed return are very real.

FWIW, the RB balance mod (which means Cyneheard and Krill) decided to patch the hole, giving no refund for a partially-built national wonder.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

I thought that the RB mod only let you cash in failgold in a single city. I think that strikes the right balance between compensation and exploiting a hole in the design.

[regoarrarr]

I thought that the RB mod only let you cash in failgold in a single city. I think that strikes the right balance between compensation and exploiting a hole in the design.

It was world wonder failgold only in a single city and no national wonder failgold

[NobleHelium]

No, it's no fail gold if you are the one to complete the wonder. National wonders will always be completed by you, so there's never any fail gold. You can get fail gold from world wonders if someone else builds them. Maybe they added an additional limitation of only one city, but I'm certain about the rest.

[Cyneheard]

Maybe they added an additional limitation of only one city, but I'm certain about the rest.

I'd have to check with T-Hawk if we did that one, but, yes, we decided that intentionally setting yourself up for fail gold was a fixable exploit/weakness in the game design.

I suspect that the easiest way to prevent the free-wealth-or-research is simply to disable production automation.

[T-hawk]

I coded it for the RB mod the way NobleHelium said. No fail gold for national wonders, ever. No changes to the behavior for world wonders or projects.

[SevenSpirits]

The following is not an exploit, but a bug. Unfortunately it seems like a big deal, as far as previously undiscovered bugs go. I've copied it from my pbem23 thread with the specifics edited out, so that it can be seen by people who can't view our thread, and discussed freely.

I've made a very interesting and pertinent discovery about trade route mechanics. To summarize:

Trade routes to cities owned by players who come before you in turn order can get wasted on continental cities, in a way that does not happen for cities of players who are after you.

The later you are in the turn order, the more the trade route mechanics will screw you! Here's how it works:

First, your cities are ordered by their trade route modifier. Cities with ToA or harbors would get bumped to the front, cities with pop over 10 get a slight edge, and tiebreaker is the city order (generally the order of founding). Being on an island is irrelevant for the sorting (even though it's liable to cause overseas bonuses) because we don't know where the trade route is leading at this stage. Overseas-ness is relative.

Second, the game looks at the first city in your list of cities (say, your highest pop city) and assigns it the best possible trade routes. To do this, it loops through all the players in player order with no special case made for yourself. So once the foreign overseas routes are gone, foreign continental routes of players who go before you can start being assigned to your continental cities, where they're worth the same as an internal overseas route, instead of being saved for your island cities where they're worth more.

Thus this bug can lose you commerce if 1) you are playing a multiplayer game and are later in the turn order than at least one trade partner and 2) you have some foreign trade routes, but not enough that every trade route is foreign and 3) you have cities on more than one landmass and 4) some of your earlier-founded cities are on the same landmass as some of your trading partners' cities.

This is a ridiculous bug. I guess we're lucky we're going second in this game. I'm inclined to play with a mod that fixes this in future games (not RB mod though).

Unlike the exploits mentioned in this thread, this isn't something that can be avoided by the players. We literally need to play with a mod if we don't want open borders to benefit the partner who's earlier in turn order more in a situation that's pretty common in RB games. I'm thinking of making a bugfix mod with this and a couple other things (but no balance stuff).

Note to people currently in games: I'm pretty sure we all just have to suck it up.

[Ceiliazul]

from my pbem23 thread with the specifics edited out

how much of a gpt swing are you seeing between the first and last player?

[Lord Parkin]

The following is not an exploit, but a bug. Unfortunately it seems like a big deal, as far as previously undiscovered bugs go. I've copied it from my pbem23 thread with the specifics edited out, so that it can be seen by people who can't view our thread, and discussed freely.

Unlike the exploits mentioned in this thread, this isn't something that can be avoided by the players. We literally need to play with a mod if we don't want open borders to benefit the partner who's earlier in turn order more in a situation that's pretty common in RB games. I'm thinking of making a bugfix mod with this and a couple other things (but no balance stuff).

Note to people currently in games: I'm pretty sure we all just have to suck it up.

What's the actual physical impact though? Surely if it averaged out to a significant impact on commerce generation over time, it would have been noticed before. If the difference on most maps is just a few commerce here and there, it's not worth worrying too much about. Even in the worst case scenario, how much difference would it make?

Not saying it's a good thing (obviously bugs should be removed where possible), just not convinced it's necessarily a massive problem.

The governor exploit you mentioned earlier though, that's definitely worth banning. Getting two build outputs from a city per turn is most definitely a big problem.