Galleys in oceans?

[LordShiva]

It's not like the AI doesn't engage in suicide missions of its own. Nevermind that they're unintentionally suicidal (can we even use the word "unintentional" when talking about AI?).

[Fried-Psitalon]

Show me even one provable, clear, documentable case of suicide galleys by the AI in C3C. You can't. :P

Tiberius - Obviously it was an unfair and tremendous advantage, or people wouldn't be willing to sacrifice large numbers of shields (or sometimes none at all) to gain it. When the AI gets unfair/tremendous advantages the player cannot duplicate, people scream "cheat." When the player gets those same bonuses the AI can't duplicate...

[Last Conformist]

The new system makes more sense anyway.

[John-SJ]

Originally posted by Diadem
Galleys can enter any square within your cultural borders. Even if they are ocean squares. You can sometimes use that to get to places you can't normally go, in fact.

When you have open borders, your galleys can do the same in your friend's cultural borders.

Well, dumb me then!

When I saw another civ's galley hop from the southern tip of our shared continent to a nearby island (across a narrow ocean) I thought the AI was cheating.

For some reason I assumed that when the description for the galley said, "Unable to enter ocean sqaures", it meant that galleys were unable to enter ocean squares. Now, I wonder why I would think that?

[TheArsenal]

That's news to me as well. Did I overlook this, or is this Galleys/Cultural Boundaries thing undocumented?

[Diadem]

Well, the description is not very clear. What else is new, in this game.

But it makes sense, doesn't it? If a tile is within your cultural borders it means you know it well. Ships won't get lost of tiles you have intimate knowledge of.

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by TheArsenal
That's news to me as well. Did I overlook this, or is this Galleys/Cultural Boundaries thing undocumented?

Undocumented as far as I know.

I discovered it while giving my first galley move-to orders.

[goshhash]

honestly i thought you were wrong, as i dont remember being able to do that, but i remembered to try it out in my game tonite, and hes 100% correct. i have galleys in the ocean in both my own boundaries, as well as other players.

nice catch!

there is a backfire as well. the ai was using this to move a galley up to one of my islands, and then i closed my borders. he was then stuck to move to the only coast tile available, and is now trapped as i own all the coast tiles around him.

[Enigma_Nova]

Lol - you devious bastard. I'm going to have to try abusing open borders sometime.

[Tiberius]

Originally posted by Fried-Psitalon
Tiberius - Obviously it was an unfair and tremendous advantage, or people wouldn't be willing to sacrifice large numbers of shields (or sometimes none at all) to gain it. When the AI gets unfair/tremendous advantages the player cannot duplicate, people scream "cheat." When the player gets those same bonuses the AI can't duplicate...

While mostly you are right, you are missing one very important aspect: people feel cheated, while AIs don't

Seriously though, I don't think it's a cheat, but I learned that my tastes are different in this regard than other people's. All exploits are btw just potential exploits, because you can choose not to use them, while the AI cannot choose not to use a cheat. Real exploits are those that can be used against humans; those are really bad and should be hunted down. Transport chains on the sea, combat settlers - those were real exploits and I never used them. But a suicide galley ???
Honestly I'm getting irritated by features that are missing due to the AIs inability to use them. I mean, Civ2 had quite a lot of exploits, and yet it was very fun, wasn't it?

Back to the galleys: the "galleys cannot enter ocean tiles" fundamentally contradicts another feature, the "extra movement bonus for circumnavigating the globe". IIRC the latest was on the Ideas list for civ3, so kudos for Firaxis for implementing it On the other hand, this feature should reward the spirit of adventure and exploration, when in fact as of now it rewards only the discovery of a tech. After I discover the proper tech I build two caravels, send one to the east and one to the west and after a few turns: bang! I get the bonus. They could very well give an extra movement point for the first to discover caravels, it wouldn't be much of a difference.

It would be much more rewarding if galleys could actually explore. Have you ever set a galley to "explore"? Man, is it pathetic! The poor one cannot explore anything, because he doesn't see more than what it's already uncovered by your cultural borders. So I think allowing galleys to explore by entering the ocean would be fun. To kill the possible exploit make it so that it can survive not more than one turn, by losing 50% of its hitpoints in every turn spent on the ocean, if it survives one turn. I'm not an expert, but how difficult is it to attach a procedure to the AI explore script, which would make AI ships to enter the ocean for one turn if there is nothing else to discover and then return to safe land (to undiscovered one if found)?

"One doesn't discover new land without losing sight of the shore" - wouldn't it be better to have this actually implemented in the game, and not only used as a quote?

[Enigma_Nova]

I've circumnavigated with Galleys several times and a Workboat once.
You just need to have a map that allows it.
In regards to Combat Settlers - not so useful in Civ 4 due to maintenence costs.
In regards to transport chains - Sure, I use these. They're the bomb.

[Yaga]

Since y'all are hijacking my thread, I thought I'd weigh in:

Originally posted by Tiberius
After I discover the proper tech I build two caravels, send one to the east and one to the west and after a few turns: bang! I get the bonus. They could very well give an extra movement point for the first to discover caravels, it wouldn't be much of a difference.

I have to disagree. 120 shields of production is nothing to sneeze at, nor having the cities to do it with. And, of course, you have sailing around the tips of continents until you actually do run into one another.

The bonus can also be aquired by piecing together the maps of other civ's explorations.

Either way the bonus is primarily from the act of exploration, rather than research and building.

Originally posted by Tiberius
It would be much more rewarding if galleys could actually explore. Have you ever set a galley to "explore"? Man, is it pathetic!

The galley is good for exploring the coast lines of *your* continent(s) and learning where other civs are.

As a further hijack of my own thread, I wouldn't mind seeing additional bonuses for similar discoveries. In fact, it might be a nice cultural booster -- Anyone remember Conquest of the New World? They had a good system of bonuses not only for discovering major rivers, regions, mountains, etc., but also for naming them. I'd love to see something like that put in to Civ.

Also, thanks for those who pointed out the undocumented cultural-borders-galleys thing. Now that I know what it is I'll be sure to use it move consciously.

[Silver14]

The manual kind of sucks but it is documented, page 126.

Galley movement limits:

"Must stay on coastline or within friendly cultural waters."

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Fried-Psitalon
Tiberius - Obviously it was an unfair and tremendous advantage, or people wouldn't be willing to sacrifice large numbers of shields (or sometimes none at all) to gain it. When the AI gets unfair/tremendous advantages the player cannot duplicate, people scream "cheat." When the player gets those same bonuses the AI can't duplicate...

I think you are conflating two different issues here.

When a human player does something, it is still allowed by the rules. If the AI cannot (read: has no knowledge of how do do such a task), the responsibility lies with the programmer.

OTOH, when the AI can do something that a human player cannot, it does so by breaking the rules. Or shall I say it is breaking the rules that human players must follow? To many, this is unfair (that the AI follow a different set of rules than human players). Whether this is done to provide "challenge" is a different matter.

[Fried-Psitalon]

There are many things humans can do in a game that strictly speaking might be considered "by the letter of the rules" and not "by the spirit of the rules."

Galley-chaining is a perfect example. That's absolutely unintended, exploit to the gills. Players cough and look the other way when it's mentioned, and have huge fights about whether or not it should be allowed in a Demogame. You can bet, though, that if the AI were to do that, people would scream bloody murder the moment they saw it.

There's a big difference between what the player is intended to be able to do, and what the player is actually able to do - especially in older games. Saying "the AI can't do it because the programmer screwed up" isn't valid - the programmer didn't want the human to do it either.

You can be sure, though, that the human's rule-bending antics are a whole lot more accepted in the community than the AI's.