Exploits?

[mostly_harmless]

What is there to see in this thread?
I suggest that there should be no lists whatsoever.
Let the player be in full controll how to spend the beakers.

[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.

Ah, now I understand. You are advocating for Great People to just offer so many beakers and the player can choose which tech(s) to use the beakers on. I focused on the first sentence and not really the second. Thus "lightbulbing" would be entirely up to the player as to which tech to choose.

The reason I don't like this idea is it makes for a simpler decision- You always lightbulb the most expensive tech available. Now the system often forces you to wait and clean up techs to lightbulb something really good and you have to weigh that againist setttling the Great Person, building an academy/shrine/trade mission and doing a golden age. Right now there is a nice balance (maybe settling is not as favorable as it could be), what you propose will make making the decision much easier IMHO.

[Rowain]

With the worker-stealing and the prechopping on the Exploits-list I wholeheartedly agree.

Same with the preworking.

With the BSR I fail to see the damage it does. As it is I prefer to use 100% science as long as I have money to spend and 0% once it is gone to build up treasure again.
It is alot easier for me to have an overview about what can I rushbuy, what can I upgrade additional having some money to a) perhaps pay for a tech or b) give tribute to a big bully AI is not so bad either.

I'm completly against calling the 'avoid Masonry' an Exploit. One of the selling points was that players can decide what to learn. That, although there are ages, it is no longer necessary to learn all techs of the previous age to advance. Afterall forgoing Masonry does come with a price. You won't have any chances for the Pyramids, Great Lighthouse and your chances to get Hanging Gardens are reduced too.
Besides, where to stop? If one starts to go down this lane you can also say players are not alowed to research tech that the AI does not do. The 'research a tech the AI does not priorize and use that as advantage'-strategie is far more unbalancing than the avoid Masonry thing and a lot more often possible.

[sooooo]

Dear Sirian and Griselda,

I realise this thread is just to gauge the views of the community re. these topics. But I think there should be a decision made soon. As we stand, we are playing epics and adventures with nothing on the banned list, but many tactics are listed here as "dodgy", "cheesey" or "very close to being on the banned list". Therefore there is a moral quandry every time I think "should I trade for masonry", "should I declare war and put my archer on this forested hill outside his capital" and in many other cases. Despite nothing being on the banned exploits list, this very discussion means there will be "morality traps" capable of being fallen into. I don't want to be in the situation of writing a report, only for people to take a sharp intake of air and say "Nice game, but hmm sooooo, you used that prophet for Code of Laws! Didn't Sirian say that was unfair?". You do a splendid job and I realise there are varying opinions out there, but personally I'd like a very definite line drawn. I'd like to know specifically what tactics are not OK, and to be confident that everything not on the list is allowed and won't be frowned upon.

sooooo

[Sirian]

I'd like to know specifically what tactics are not OK, and to be confident that everything not on the list is allowed and won't be frowned upon.

Your request is entirely reasonable and eminently logical. However...

The first you already have. For all events currently open, no tactics are banned. Period.

The second we cannot provide. What is frowned upon is an individual matter, unique to each player. For instance, Sulla has made clear that he frowns upon any form of sandbagging to milk the scoring system in a given event. Not everybody agrees with that. Some agree in part, that it would be ideal not to have those kind of situations, and some disagree entirely, not seeing any problem in playing for score in scored events. For me, I frown on the gameplay involved in min/maxing the Great People research option, even though most replies in this thread have defended it, and I've been persuaded that trying to do anything about it in the short term would be unwise.

You are right in that formalizing these matters would reduce tension over some gray areas. However, our history has taught us that merely putting items on the exploit list does not automatically resolve a situation. People's feelings and points of view do not always change.

My decision-making style is to weigh, carefully, all information, to investigate to obtain more information, then when the time is ripe to make a choice and stick to it with a firm commitment. There are other ways to lead, but this is my method. Sometimes it moves slowly, but when it does move, it moves surely and rarely needs further review.

There is also Civ3 history intruding. I moved faster there and caught too much grief from several quarters. This is the first time I've heard it suggested that I may be moving too slowly, but it goes to show how challenging it is trying to keep everybody on one page.

For now, use your own best judgement and let the rest take care of itself.


- Sirian

[Sirian]

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... (for those who understood the mechanics to write a complete guide on the subject, which everyone could then use, restoring the competition to more equal footing).

The paraphrase was my doing, but since it seems imprudent to chase this one down via rulemaking, then we should (as soon as possible) lean the other way and rip the thing wide open for all to see.

We not only need an explanation, but also a handy reference on all the possible "gain something from NOT researching a certain tech" pathways.

*looks around*

"So... Do we have some volunteers?"


- Sirian

[regoarrarr]

I don't know if this is what you're looking for, but there's a thread over on CFC that has the exact tech lists that a great person will research, in order

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.p...stcount=21

[Iustus]

Re Great Person tech tree tricks:

In my opinion the fundamental problem of it is the arcane nature of it all. There is basically no way for a regular player to sit down and make a plan based on this. He has to either go to the net, to find the info, or set out to figure out how the game works 'under the hood'. I do not like this.

Now, in all sorts of fields, experts love these sort of arcane things that are one way they can show their expertise, by knowing how to use this stuff.

I would like to see a solution that either eliminates most of the arcania of this, that is, put it in the game in a way that is visible to the player (perhaps as simple as putting an icon/text/number in the tech tree window that shows what tech each specialist will discover next)

OR

Change the game mechanics to elminate most of the advantage to knowing what the order of the techs is, either by changing the order or changing the advantage obtained from it, or even by randomizing it (although I would be against random, I am not a fan of huts, I wish there was a no-hut option in Custom Game).

So, possible solutions, in no particular order

1. In game info, both tech screens and civtopia entries to help the player see what each type of specialist would discover next (and next after that, etc). Coming up with a UI for this that would not be confusing and busy seems a real challenge.

2. Removing most true 'slingshots' from the Great Person system, limiting the beakers you gain from a great person to be 'appropriate' to your current tech level, either by limiting it to the lowest cost item on the list, or some sort of formula based on your overall tech level. Another way to do this would be to just change the order and criteria that a particular tech is chosen, so that you would almost never choose a high beaker tech over a lower beaker tech that you do not know, possibly even researching prerequisite techs that are not normally associated with that type of Great Person. (That is to say, you could look at every tech in the list, add to it every prerequisite tech for those techs that the player does not know, then just pick the lowest beaker count item).

3. Only changing Masonry (making it higher on the Prophet list, or some other solution), but leaving everything else the same.

4. Change the order that Great Persons research techs to be in a more 'chronological' order, in combination with choice (1) above, in order to make the user interface much clearer. If the techs always read from left to right on the tech tree, that might help.

It seems to me that most of the time the top players seem to think that unless you are either founding a religon, or performing some sort of 'slingshot', then using a great person on a tech, instead of any of the other options is usually a suboptimal choice. Do others agree with this assessment? (I personally have used them to pop techs a lot, but from my reading, this seems to be frowned upon).

If it is the case, that most people do not see using the lightbulb choice, unless they are founding a religion or using this sort of civil service slingshot (they would rather settle, build building, hurry wonder, golden age, etc), then it seems to me that there really does need to be a rethink in how the 'lightbulb' part of great people works, so as to both make it a useful game choice without the 'slingshots' and/or make the slingshots that do exist more easily graspable by less sophisticated players, like the oracle is.

-Iustus

[T-hawk]

Good thoughts, Iustus. I agree that it's a problem to play the arcane mechanics behind the game rather than the game itself. (Between the two is not a fine line; many game elements bear degrees of being one or the other.)


(perhaps as simple as putting an icon/text/number in the tech tree window that shows what tech each specialist will discover next)

Well, that's essentially the same as what we've got now in that Civfanatics thread. Problem is, though, you need to know more than the order given your current tech situation. A true solution involves looking ahead to construct "what-if" scenarios for up to a dozen techs, which sounds like it'd need a seriously complicated presentation.

And in addition to your proposed mechanic fixes, here's a fifth: Simply let the player explicitly specify the tech. This would need some refinement to differentiate between the GPs, which could be as simple as giving each tech a set of flags for eligibility for each GP. (This is actually simpler than the current system.) Or you could refine it even further by specifying an amount of beakers for each tech to receive from each GP. For example, Economics could have its full cost paid by a Great Merchant, or 1500 beakers from a Scientist, 500 from an Engineer, and nothing (ineligible) from a Prophet or Artist.

The more that I think about it, I think here's the fundamental problem: researching a tech (like Masonry) can block a strategic option. This should never happen -- you should never be penalized for researching a technology. And I think that any system that involves the game selecting the technology will sometimes fall victim to this. Explicit control of the tech won't.


It seems to me that most of the time the top players seem to think that unless you are either founding a religon, or performing some sort of 'slingshot', then using a great person on a tech, instead of any of the other options is usually a suboptimal choice. Do others agree with this assessment?

Not sure if I'm a top player just yet , but I agree. For all great people, the usage choices are a tradeoff between instant benefit and investment for the future (either settling or constructing whatever.) Early in the game, you have tons of time available for a long-term investment to pay off. A one-time beaker payoff needs tremendous leverage to be worth more than that. There are many scenarios that create such leverage, including founding a religion (which is a long-term investment in itself), or even if enough brokering is available to clean up a large pile of techs on that one lightbulb. But without leverage, a one-time payoff of 1000 to 1500 beakers just isn't worth much.

[sooooo]

It seems to me that most of the time the top players seem to think that unless you are either founding a religon, or performing some sort of 'slingshot', then using a great person on a tech, instead of any of the other options is usually a suboptimal choice. Do others agree with this assessment?

Hrm, I disagree, especially on a panagea map. The GP is getting that tech plus all of the techs you can trade it for. For example, I will often use a great prophet for Theology even if christianity has been founded because you can trade Theology for Currency, Construction, Metal Casting etc. Thus if you have enough trade partners (eg panagea map) your prophet is discovering up to 4-5 techs for you. Same thing with using a scientist for philosophy even if Taoism is founded. Trade the tech for machinery and feudalism and your scientist was easily worth it.