Well I'll go to the foot of my stairs

[col.tarleton]

Just joined although a long time reader of this site and this is my 1st post.
After years of game designing and testing by a group of bright,dedicated gamesters along comes a mere slip of a girl and drives a coach and horses hey diddle diddle,staight up the middle.
I refer,of course,to that remarkable woman,Moonsinger.Her 17 point road map guarentees a win on deity.Basically it's chops + praetorians+capture pyramids+perpetual anarchy.Also choose peacefull AI's.I know that anarchy is an exploit but all the parameters have to be used together for it to work.
Of course the designers can't be expected to cover all the bases and would have expected some smart arse to discover a wrinkle or two.I doubt that they expected it to happen so quickly and so comprehensibly.
Moonsinger is not good,she's exceptional.One could say that she only managed it by exploiting game weaknesses but her vision is still a tour de force.
Moonsinger has also posted,fully explained,the highest ever score on civ3 Sid and can beat Sid level whilst fixing her make -up.All in all she astonishes me.I wonder what she'll think up next.
Might have been a good idea for Firaxis to take her on board during the developement and or beta testing.

[kryszcztov]

To counter-balance this very bright painting a bit, I can add that she is the only player I know who decided to abandon PBEMing and her current PBEMs because "it would be awful to destroy what we took so long to build" (wars vs builder mode). Yeah right. That doesn't impress me a lot. She sure has a great instinct for finding the most improbable solutions. But her milking ways and her search for the higher score belong to the boring part of the game, to me. But she's a great player, no doubt.

[xenikos]

[valley girl voice]Exploits are, like, so Civ3. How three years ago![/end valley girl voice]

[Drasca]

You might find many of us share the feeling to avoid reducing the game into a narrow set of predicted actions. There are many ways to guarantee victory through restricting the game's possible outcomes, and personally I am not impressed when you've created for a predictable game where all the moves are pre-set. Reduce your risk to nothing, spoil your outcome, the challenge no longer exists, and the game becomes quickly spoiled... useless to the player.

If I might suggest, look for a challenge to take on yourself and devise your own strategems to tackle them. If you're still feeling frisky, write about it so others may share in your leisure. The open adventures here are a good start.

[Sullla]

I can give you Soren's exact reaction to MoonSinger's Praetorian/anarchy/chop strategy: "We never expected anyone would do something like that." The anarchy rules will be changing in the next patch to prevent you from staying in permanent anarchy, by the way.

I have nothing but respect for MoonSinger. Some of the things she has come up with are nothing short of brilliant. However - I have never understood her fascination with milking the scoring system as far as it can possibly go (in both Civ3 and Civ4). At some point, you cross a line and you stop playing a game entirely; you're just running a calculating algorithm, pushing the buttons to see how high the numbers can get. That might be fun to do once, but trying it over and over again? Not my idea of fun.

[col.tarleton]

I get the feeling that some people are missing the point of my article.
First I should explain my history of playing Civ.I started back in the year dot when civilisation was 1st published using an Atari 1000 just a floppy disc drive and using the TV as a monitor.I've bought every advance of civ up to the present game.I have played civ almost to the exclusion of all else and i've never been any good at it.
When civ3 came out I had the usual frustrations,feeling that the AI cheated but then I found civfanatics and immediately stumbled accross Sullla's web site.It was like a breath of fresh air,the scales dropped from my eyes.Just goes to show what a thicko I am.Since then,I've been an avid reader of SG's and other good players web sites.I must have read zillions of SG's,it's a form of relaxation to me,and have seen just about everyone and his dog playing at one time or another.I naturally have formed opinions of players ability and character,erronious or not.
For what it's worth Sullla is my favourite,he writes so well and seems to answer my questions before they are formulated.T-Hawk is just magic,Sirian is a whizz and there's the up and coming Kylearan.
I do feel that i know what i'm talking about so back to the remarkable Moonsinger.Milking is a pain and playing formulaic civ is of no interest to me.However if people wish to do it it's no skin off my nose,it's only a game,albeit a very very good one.
To reiterate the pont of my article,Moonsinger is a very bright and innovative player and the game is all the better for it.

[Garath]

With all possible attempt to avoid directly criticising, your posts would be a *lot* easier to read if you put spaces after full stops and commas, col.tarleton.

As to the article, I doubt you'll find many people here who don't also agree Moonsinger is a brilliant Civ player. If that was what your article was for, it wasn't necessary. If that wasn't... I'm unclear as to what you were saying that required the creation of a new thread here. Can you clarify?

--Garath

[col.tarleton]

With all possible attempt to avoid directly criticising, your posts would be a *lot* easier to read if you put spaces after full stops and commas, col.tarleton.

As to the article, I doubt you'll find many people here who don't also agree Moonsinger is a brilliant Civ player. If that was what your article was for, it wasn't necessary. If that wasn't... I'm unclear as to what you were saying that required the creation of a new thread here. Can you clarify?

--Garath

G'day Garath,
!st I should explain the thread name, the expression may not be well known in the colonies.It is an expression of surprise and resignation as in I give up, I'm going to bed.
I was reading the newspaper this morning and to my surprise there is indeed a space between the punctuation and the first letter of the next word. Zut alors the mans right. I'm useless when it comes to typing, very much a one finger point and hope man, it takes me forever to type anything and I really didn't know about the space. No wonder my posts look like a dogs breakfast.
Thanks for pointing that out, Garath, much obliged.
Seeing as you straightened me out on the space front and I'm a nice chap and feeling indulgent today I'll try to explain more fully my reason for the post.
There are many good players floating about and some excellent ones but the innovators are few and far between. Sirian obviously comes to mind as does T-Hawk, Charis and the lovely Moonsinger. I could expand on this if you so wish, if not take my word for it.
Barely more than 2 months after the game was launched along comes Moonsinger and shows how to beat civ4 at deity without breaking a sweat. Not only that but with her 17 point road map anyone can do it.
This has forced the Hall of Fame to ban the ploy. Anyone who can get the HOF to obey any rules at all is playing a blinder in my opinion. She has also got Soren and his merry men to add a fix in the next patch. This is quite extraordinary.
This probably doesn't bother Soren any and he probably admires her thinking outside the box as much as I do. Her ploy is easilly fixed and is therefore of not much account.Anyone who wants to try it out can do so and good luck to them but I can't see it being adopted in SG's or any other organised games.
Well thats about it, Garath, hope that clears it up for you. Just look at those spaces ! .
The bit about opening the thread, I didn't know that I needed permission for that, I'll have to read the rules a regs. To whom do I apply? Is it you, are you Chief in Charge of Opening Theads? CinCoot for short.
Hello, I'm Garath,I'm CinCOOT. Sounds good.

[Speaker]

Good sarcasm Col. Tarleton. Not much appreciated however.

No one was questioning your right to create a thread. Garath was just wondering if you were posting this in response to some stimulus, or whether it was just a Moonsinger lovefest. There is no doubt she is a tremendous player, although like Sullla said, her way of playing is not my cuppa. But nevertheless, she is a great player.

Then again, Sir_Pleb is/was a better player, and we don't have a thread celebrating him.

So I guess Garath is wondering what stimulated you to create this thread defending Moonsinger from her 0 detractors?

[Jester]

Okay, Col.Tarleton, I don't know what forums you're used to, but things are done a little differently around here.

First, please do not waltz through the front door and post a thread for no reason but to praise a player whose style is in complete opposition to our gaming philosophy, as boldly stated on the front page. We are not interested in exploits, cookie-cutter strategies, or milking. There are communities that focus exclusively on that; we are not those communities.

Second, please, for the love of grammar, add spaces, periods and capital letters to your posts. They are extremely difficult to read without them.

As for the topic: I've long suspected chopping was overpowered, and I've been sure since the first time I played the Romans that the praetorians were too strong. This strategy just shows that, by throwing together a few overpowered elements, the game breaks down. I hope they fix that, because I would hate to see Deity degenerate into "ancient war or bust," a milker's paradise.

-Jester