Exploits?

[Atlas]

As an aside, whenever I have tried Binary Science always end up giving about half my savings away to Monty/Alex/Cathy due to greedy demands and my paltry army

[Sirian]

I would suggest to have great people just give you a certain number of beakers independent of their profession.

They already do, except that overflow won't carry over to a second tech. So using a leader that will give you, say, up to 900 beakers of research, on a tech that costs only 300, is a potential waste.

You could, however, always save your leaders until they could be used on techs that cost closer to or more than their beaker value.

The problem I have with Masonry is that I'm responsible for Masonry being added as a prereq to Monotheism. I personally caused the side effects on Great Prophets that this has introduced, which were not part of Soren's original intent for Prophets, and certainly not my intent. (Masonry as prereq fixed the problem it was aimed at fixing, which was bigger than this issue, but opened up this new problem. From a game design perspective, I cannot help but feel a compelling urge to clean up a mess I made here! And yes, it IS a mess other views notwithstanding. )


- Sirian

[regoarrarr]

Seems like a short-term, easily implemented strategy would be to make Masonry have the same (high) value for a Prophet that Monotheism has (8 I believe?).

A longer-term, more complex strategy would be to have Great People offer you the highest technology in their list that you don't have, and if you don't have the pre-requisites for it, then it would offer you the pre-req (and if you're missing multiple pre-reqs, then it gives you the one that is highest rated).

In this particular situation, it would see that the highest rated tech was Monotheism, so it would want to give you that, but since you hadn't researched Masonry, it would instead offer that.

The short-term solution works, but is this (Masonry) really the only instance of "manipulating" what tech a Great Person will give you? If you're going for a fast domination on a continents map, you need to beeline to Astronomy. A Great Scientist will give you (part of) Astronomy, but if you make the mistake of researching (or trading for) Theology, then all of a sudden it unlocks the higher rated techs of Paper and Education. You also should not research Meditation, because then it unlocks Philosophy, which is also higher rated.

There are plenty of other examples, so how into this do we really want to get? If you fix one, you're probably just opening others.

The longer-term strategy I mention above might be one way to fix this, but there are probably loopholes in it too...

[Sirian]

There are plenty of other examples, so how into this do we really want to get? If you fix one, you're probably just opening others.

Could be. However, what is the "gameplay" involved here? To map one's way through which doors to leave closed to best exploit the most value out of using Lightbulb Leaders for slingshot effects? Is that really fun? To me, it's not strategy so much as micromanagement. The Oracle does much the same thing, except that it does it in a logical and balanced way, which any player can figure out without reverse engineering the programming and flowcharting all the best possible (but very obscure) moves. Getting the most out of these leaders is way too complex, leading me to find fault with the implementation.

Perhaps it is the system itself which is to blame. That only matters in terms of potential solutions. I do not plan to make an RB Official Mod just over this system. If true that the system is working double duty for AI research paths as well as the lightbulbing, it may not even be fixable within the current design. This would mean modding more than just the XML to try to repair, and that could push ANY modded solution out of practical reach.

I have not gone that far yet. All I've done is observe where I've found the problems.


- Sirian

[Sirian]

One thing I don't see in this list is the give money then sell resources to maximize AI available GPT.

Principles of triage. Some things are so far past saving, they don't warrant immediate attention. Anybody who doesn't know to avoid something that broken has a lot to learn about this community.

My concerns of the moment revolve around issues that involve shades of gray, to a greater or lesser extent. I've also not wanted to make official rules against things that would be patched, although having arrived at the final patch, that may become necessary. A reminder is good: if we get to actually updating the list, nudge me on this point again, please.


- Sirian

[T-hawk]

Perhaps it is the system itself which is to blame.

I agree. Following this thread, my thought is that the real problem is how you have some but inexact control of directing research choices by Great People. And the inexact control involves some extremely nonintuitive technical hoops to jump through. But those who don't, miss out on a seriously useful strategic option.

We (the community at large) solved this once before, when the initial patches of Civ 3 had the Theory of Evolution providing techs in a deterministic, semi-controlled way. The solution then was to first pick up all the optional medieval techs and Sanitation to force the wonder into giving you required industrial techs. Almost all agreed that simply giving the player explicit control of the techs was the best option. Yes, it led to a One Right Choice situation, but at least the One Right Choice was clearly presented to the player in the game context rather than dependent on playing the technical mechanics behind the game.

[Zeviz]

"Seed Corn" looks like the worst offender among the strategies listed. Perhaps you could make a rule along the lines of "When you declare war, you can't capture AI's workers outside of cities before 1000BC, unless their last city is about to fall." Or "When you declare war before 1000BC, you can't capture AI's workers outside of cities during the first 5 turns of your troops being in enemy territory."

Systematic pre-chopping and pre-working also looks bad. (It was an elegant idea the first time somebody tried it, but it abuses game mechanics.)

"Binary Science" gives an in-game advantage (extra beakers) just for clicking a button 10 times every few turns: No thought involved, just the patience to repeatedly click the button every time. However, this gives only a couple extra beakers per turn, so it's mainly significant in the early game, and even then I am not sure if it's significant enough to be banned. By the way, all legitimate benefits of Binary Science can be obtained by other means:
- Delaying a tech a couple turns can be obtained by researching another tech for a few turns before switching to the one you were delaying.
- To see the state of your economy you don't need binary science: just drop the slider down to 0% and immediately return it to previous position whenever you want to see how much your empire is costing you.

I haven't tried using the prophet for CS, but I wouldn't consider it an exploit. Figuring out unusual paths through the tech tree is one of the most fun elements of the game for me, so I wouldn't want Great People to be banned from the list of things to consider when determining research path. Besides, there are at least some in-game costs for this move: if you use the first prophet for CS, you can't use him for a Shrine or Theology, you can't make your first great person a scientist for the academy, etc.

PS While we are talking about questionable strategies, what about selling AI resources which it can't use? (For example, selling Coal to pre-Steam Power AIs.)

[VoiceOfUnreason]

If true that the system is working double duty for AI research paths as well as the lightbulbing, it may not even be fixable within the current design.

I took some time last night to track down the bit of code that I had remembered....

CvPlayerAI::AI_bestTech (CvPlayerAI.cpp)

Code:

if (!isHuman())
{
    for (iJ = 0; iJ < GC.getNumFlavorTypes(); iJ++)
    {
        iValue += (AI_getFlavorValue((FlavorTypes)iJ) * GC.getTechInfo((TechTypes)iI).getFlavorValue(iJ) * 20);
    }
}

AI_getFlavorValue is going to return 2,5, or 10. getFlavorValue is going to return an integer between 0 and 10 (inclusive).

Prophet techs are selected based on FLAVOR_RELIGION; CivilService = 6, Masonry = 1. The only leaders that would be affected by changing these values are those which have a religious bias. If Masonry were promoted to be on equal footing with CS, Gandhi would be completely unaffected, Asoka would see a 500 point boost, Isabella a 1000 point boost.

To give a sense of scale, the opportunity to found a religion gives a 600 point boost to a tech when a civ doesn't already control a holy city.

[mostly_harmless]

They already do, except that overflow won't carry over to a second tech. ...

What I meant is, that there are no special tech lists for great prophets or great engineers.
The player decides on which tech to spend the bonus beakers a great person (regardless of profession) offers.
Say I have two more turns to research horseback riding and I just got a great whatever. If there is no overflow (like Sirian pointed out). I wait for HBR to finish and then I choose the next tech I want to research and have my great whatever to add his beakers to it. That would especially help with very late game great prophets which are kind of useless.

[Atlas]

What I meant is, that there are no special tech lists for great prophets or great engineers.
The player decides on which tech to spend the bonus beakers a great person (regardless of profession) offers.

Have you seen this? http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread...667&page=2