The gift exploit

[CarnalCanaan]

Firaxians-

Peopleses are gittin' all up-in-arms about the gift exploit. You give someone you don't like a worthless city and they like you for it. Since you can't disband cities (And why is that?), they're stuck.

If the algorithms can be made to decide whether a TRADE is equitable or advantageous, why not set one up to make the same decision on accepting gifts?

[Axxaer]

Yes it is quite a nice little exploit there. I'm sure it'll be fixed in the near future as it is quite obvious and well talked about.

[kittenOFchaos]

Slight threadjack - gifting units...

The only thing I've tried to gift is a missionary to see if the A.I would spread my religion to himself (there was a good reason for this at the time that I can't quite recall). It didn't work is what I do recall

[Son of David]

Gee. As a workaround, you could always just try abstaining from whatever you think is an exploit.

[Bhruic]

Originally posted by kittenOFchaos
Slight threadjack - gifting units...

The only thing I've tried to gift is a missionary to see if the A.I would spread my religion to himself (there was a good reason for this at the time that I can't quite recall). It didn't work is what I do recall

If they have it as their state religion, it seems they'll try and use the missionary. It's also a good way to spread your religion to people you don't have an open borders treaty with - gift missionaries to a friend that does have open borders.

Bh

[xxFlukexx]

I remember gifting cities as an exploit in civ3 and civ2 too. I believe that cities should not be tradeable or at least 'redded out' 99% of the time. The only time where a city should be traded is as part of a ceasefire aggreement and the city in question should only be a city that borders both parties. Gifting an enemy a worthless city, then attacking it for gold and tech spoils or favorable relations is an old and very cheap tactic.

As for spreading religion, some AIs are extremely aggressive in spreading their religion(looking at you Mrs. Egypt) and some don't use missionaries very much. I've tried gifting 2-3 military units once, no relations change, but I assume it was because I need to gift units that are fully upgraded and more of them to gain better relations.

I don't see why anyone would be getting "all up-in-arms" about a gift exploit. If you use it, that's cheating and doesn't really count as a win in my book because if the AI actually knew it was getting a worthless one tile city surrounded by tundra it would not like you so much. It's a flaw in the diplomacy AI, not the first, not the last and hopefully will be fixed in a patch.

[Son of David]

Sometimes an apparently 'worthless' city turns out to be worthwhile because it gives a civ a permanent base in a place which might be quite far from its Empire.

So you could gift a tiny little one-tile island which the civ could use as a military base, facilitating wars against distant civs.

How on earth you're going to address all of that in a patch without simply cutting out even more diplomatic options is beyond me.

[Enigma_Nova]

It's not a cheat, it exploits the stupidity of the enemy - not the flaws of the game mechanics.
An Exploit is when you move your settler into the black fog and look for spots when the build base icon will light up.

[Axxaer]

But its exploiting the stupidity of the AI, which is essentially part of the game itself. If a human player falls for it then thats a good strategy but when the AI falls for it almost every time, I think its too easy to exploit.

[rjmatsleepers]

Originally posted by xxFlukexx
I remember gifting cities as an exploit in civ3 and civ2 too.

I don't see why anyone would be getting "all up-in-arms" about a gift exploit. If you use it, that's cheating and doesn't really count as a win in my book because if the AI actually knew it was getting a worthless one tile city surrounded by tundra it would not like you so much. It's a flaw in the diplomacy AI, not the first, not the last and hopefully will be fixed in a patch.

I don't think cities can be gifted in Civ2, but there are a lot of other exploits. Most of us settled for a set of house rules that outlawed them - "Rah's rules" is one example. There were also things on which there was no agreement as to whether they actually were an exploit. We may have that here - something hidden in the fog of war between a strategy and an exploit.

RJM at Sleeper's

[Monsto]

Originally posted by Son of David
Gee. As a workaround, you could always just try abstaining from whatever you think is an exploit.

this is prob the best idea evar. don't extend your personal opinion on the rules of the game into other ppls installations and force them to play as YOU want.

what you SHOULD do is scoff, laff and point at tell them how much of a no0b they are for being unable to play the game without some kinda exploit.

[CarnalCanaan]

Originally posted by Monsto


what you SHOULD do is scoff, laff and point at tell them how much of a no0b they are for being unable to play the game without some kinda exploit.

"No0b." *teehee*

My problem arises from the fact that the player can force something on the AI which the AI can't force on the player. Another fix would be to not allow players to reject gifts. Of course, how you program an AI to use "exploits" against players, I have no idea.

Better I think would be give the AI the same options as the player. If the AI can't figure out how to use it, well, that's a whole other bag o' kittens.

But since this AI seems to do an acceptable job of rejecting patently unfair offers, I think it might be able to reject unfair gifts. It DOES know the value of a city when you trade it for peace, so it should also know the (un)value of a city offered to it.

[Tiberius]

Originally posted by Son of David
Gee. As a workaround, you could always just try abstaining from whatever you think is an exploit.

Exactly.

[Riotamus]

As I mentioned in another thread, a crappy-looking city is not necessarily a drain to the empire (as it might seem). In order for it to not slow down research, its combined beakers+gold output must be equal to its maintenance costs plus a term that compensates for nation-wide redirection of research to wealth. Namely:

new_city_beakers+new_city_gold = new_city_costs + (research_drop - commerce_gains)

Since the percentage by which both research and wealth are adjusted is the same, the last term might even be zero (or negative!), if research and wealth amplifying buildings are distributed evenly on average (f.i. library-market 25%, university-grocer 25%, academy-bank 50%). Getting combined output equal to the maintenance costs is not that hard if there's access to water, especially ocean (=can build harbor), or a special resource, or even some ground suitable for building a cottage. In the worst case the city can even build research/wealth. If nothing else, such city adds to the score and the number of UN votes.

Now, one must also take into account the long-term effects of the number-of-cities maintenance costs. To do that, "projected" maintenance costs must be used in the equation instead of immediate ones ("projected" means the costs assuming the nation has its target number of cities and the city in question is added the last).

Since the AI has discounts on maintenance, it's quite possible that it can benefit from a seemingly completely hopeless city (heck, it even *founds* such cities fairly often). Someone from betatesters mentioned once that the AI does check if a city is profitable before accepting it.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Enigma_Nova
It's not a cheat, it exploits the stupidity of the enemy - not the flaws of the game mechanics.

But in this case the "stupidity of the enemy" is a flaw of the game mechanics because we're talking about the AI.