Well I'll go to the foot of my stairs

[Kylearan]

Hi,

That's more like it folks, now that we've got the name calling out of the way we've got a real discussion going here.

And yet I have difficulties finding any meaningful contribution from the starter of this thread?

But maybe he's busy guarding his bridge. Or he has to wait for colder weather to help with his thinking...

-Kylearan

[Jester]

Who crowned you king of the forum, Col.Patronizing?

As Moonsinger herself points out, the only reason you really need the perpetual anarchy is to be able to keep the cities you conquer. Now, that's obviously very nice, and improves the power of your chop/praetorian rush immensely. But you still need to play the game up to the point where you get the pyramids, and that means doing a straight up rush against the Deity AIs in the very early game.

On any settings, that combination lets you jump the production and military curves to an extent that no other strategy can even approach. And since on Deity, those curves are supposed to be stacked heavily against you, this strategy could only work as well as it does if the chop/praetorian rush was inherently very, very strong. I don't think either element, by itself, is outright broken or explotative, like the anarchy abuse obviously is. But each is too strong, and together, they give the player vastly too much power in the early game.

If they didn't, this strategy would fall flat on its face, pyramids or not.

-Jester

[Majromax]

On any settings, that combination lets you jump the production and military curves to an extent that no other strategy can even approach. And since on Deity, those curves are supposed to be stacked heavily against you, this strategy could only work as well as it does if the chop/praetorian rush was inherently very, very strong. I don't think either element, by itself, is outright broken or explotative, like the anarchy abuse obviously is. But each is too strong, and together, they give the player vastly too much power in the early game.

If they didn't, this strategy would fall flat on its face, pyramids or not.

In a sense, this strategy does fall on its face. Chop-rushing anything is mortgaging the future to get something now -- in this case the Praetorians. Each forest chopped for a unit is a forest not available later, and a turn that isn't spent building necessary infrastructure/workers. To make it worse, the Praetorian also incurs support costs.

The perpetual anarchy removes the "pay later" aspect of this -- the support costs show up for neither units nor cities. Without the anarchy, an empire would extremely quickly become bogged down in cities that don't make cash, paying for too many units.

My guess is that a chop/Praetorian rush wouldn't work at all (sans infinite Anarchy) on any level higher than Monarchy or so (given non-duel settings anyway). The player might be able to eliminate one neighbour, but the support costs would reduce expansion to nearly zilch.

Indeed, that's the "merit" of the Anarchy strategy. By not paying for support costs (proportional, roughly, to the area of the empire), and with production coming from forest chops (available on the perimeter), the player can achieve an at-least-linear expansion rate -- possibly even greater if Praetorian losses aren't crippling.

That said, I do think that Praetorian units are too strong for their era, but it's not a horrible misbalance.

[BeefontheBone]

They did attempt to rebalance Praets in the last patch changelog by bumping the cost slightly, but it probably wasn't really enough. Then again, different UUs suit different styles. My Dad got into the habit of only ever playing as Rome in Civ 3 for the Legions' extra attack strength (personally I usually preferred Sumeria for the rapid expansion with cheap defenders and science boost) - which struck me as rather dull. Surely the point of mastering a game is not to find a cheesy exploit but to develop sufficient skill to overcome the challenge set by the game (or in the much more interesting case of RB - can't believe I never found this place while playing Civ 3 - to impose other restrictions on yourself in order to provide new kinds of challenge). A technique which follows a straightforward no-brainer mechanical checklist isn't fun - a monkey could do that. And I'm sure the other players here agree with me on that one - that's the point of RB! (I'll probably end up buying GalCiv 2 on the grounds that I might get a lot more out of it with you guys on hand than I did muddling through a few games of GalCiv by myself without getting past that feeling of not really knowing what was going on).

The only thing which makes this particular "strategy" work is the infinite anarchy - without it you'd be dead meat. Although I'm sure some other "strategy" will show up once they fix that.

[Jester]

Well, let me be clear here. The anarchy exploit is what changes this from "a combination of factors which is too strong" into "near-guaranteed win, given certain settings, on Deity, even if you don't know a granary from a grenadier."

But, if you tried this strategy without praetorians, you would be dramatically less powerful, and without chops, you'd be up the creek entirely. Without the anarchy, sure, you can't conquer the whole world and build untold armies, but you can certainly get an advantage that is otherwise very, very difficult to get: successful ancient war on Deity. The exploit just pushes an already too-powerful combination over the edge into a broken game.

-Jester

[Sirian]

Surely the point of mastering a game is not to find a cheesy exploit but to develop sufficient skill to overcome the challenge set by the game.

In a more direct sense, the purpose of making games is to sell copies. The wider the appeal, the more copies sold. Certainly there is nothing wrong in my view with meeting the needs and wants of those who aren't interested in balanced games, but in playing and replaying and replaying a scenario that they really enjoy.

My problem always came when designers chose to sacrifice one set of interests for another, and my interests were among those being sacrificed! I always believed that squeaky wheels were getting too much grease, and that developers were overly influenced by complaints, by marketing theories, and by the occasional lack of imagination.


A lot of players want a strong Rome. It's historically aesthetic. Rome was the default civ in Civ1, and players often attach (even irrationally) to whatever gave them a pleasing experience in the past. Plus in the quest for variety, this also means some options that are a bit strong or a bit weak. Balance doesn't always mean sameness, but tradeoffs and variation. Rome without Iron does happen, and when it does, then what are you going to do? The beeline can let you see where the Iron is, but you still have to get to it, hook it up, protect it. Sometimes that's easy, sometimes it's not.

Rome's UU is beatable by Axemen, which are cheaper per unit.

Part of the problem also lies with the combat changes in v152, which favor any unit with higher base strength. The Praets were balanced OK on release, but now wounded units overall are somewhat unbalanced, and more adjustments may be forthcoming to fix that.


Tracking down loopholes is not my specialty. I focus on finding balanced gameplay, and rely on others to point out the cracks in the system. In the end, you cannot get to a great game by plugging leaks. If that's all you do, you end up with a complicated mess like the Civ3 Epics rules. (Those of you new to RB, go and look up the Civ3 Epics rules some time, and you'll see what I mean.) If all you CAN do is plug leaks, that may be better than leaking all over the place, but a sturdy ship is better than a patchquilt one.

In the right set of circumstances, holes will occur. Cross this with that, toss in the other, and something breaks. A break that only works in one situation is not a balance problem. (The Praet solution only works with one civ.) An imbalance that hits most of the game is a real problem (early chops too strong, anarchy loophole that allows players to circumvent the most important limitation on military power... Yeah, those need some fixing!)


- Sirian

[ds61514]

Well, let me be clear here. The anarchy exploit is what changes this from "a combination of factors which is too strong" into "near-guaranteed win, given certain settings, on Deity, even if you don't know a granary from a grenadier."

The balancing factor here is that the settings are SO restrictive. They include:

1. Epic speed
2. Single Landmass (woe be to you if the pyramids are built on another continent!)
3. No barbarians
4. Pre-selected AIs.
5. Nondefault number of AI
6. AIs curious reluctance to build lots of axeman.

All those factors help to contribute to the strategy. I've read about consistent Deity spaceship victories with Gandhi that rely on a future start+fast worker. Does that make Gandhi overpowered? I don't think so.

In the right set of circumstances, holes will occur. Cross this with that, toss in the other, and something breaks. A break that only works in one situation is not a balance problem.

Exactly.

Would you pick Rome to win you an Archi game (where Washington/Qin Shi Huang are far better)? What about MP games (Inca/Gandhi)? Fastest spaceship launch (Financial Civ)? Fastest cultural win?

IOW, if I was playing tilted axis random landmass would I choose Caesar? Probably not. I'd go with a more "balanced civ."

Different civs excel in different situations. Rome's forte is winning land wars against AI. Praetorians are strong no doubt about it (playing Rome/Pangaea as my first game on Emperor certainly gave me an, um, twisted view on the difficulty level). But difficulty isn;'t just dependent on the difficulty level but all those other customizable settings. If I played Caesar on Islands I'd probably get my tail kicked.

(Edit: first post here. Stumbled upon this site why'll reading Sirian's and Sullla's reports) :-)

[Sirian]

(Edit: first post here. Stumbled upon this site why'll reading Sirian's and Sullla's reports) :-)

Welcome to RB.

Perhaps you'll try out some of our events and join in the report writing?


- Sirian

[Ribannah]

The Moonsingers and the Sir Plebs play the exploits on top of playing the game. I don't have the least bit of admiration for that.

I remember a game in the Civ3 GOTM where Moonsinger and I played quite a similar game, with the same victory condition. I was way ahead of her during the entire game, including on my turn of victory when I was not only faster but had a larger empire, more techs etc., but she nonetheless got the better score for one reason only: she won many turns later, which gave her time for a good bit of milking. Which I couldn't do, because I had already won ....

[T-hawk]

My Dad got into the habit of only ever playing as Rome in Civ 3 for the Legions' extra attack strength

Don't tell him about the Persian Immortals then, which actually _do_ have extra attack strength (Civ 3 Legionarys only have extra defense.)

Tracking down loopholes is not my specialty. . . . If that's all you do, you end up with a complicated mess like the Civ3 Epics rules.

Yeah, what kind of nimrod would spend more effort on poking loopholes than playing the game?