Knowing the size of stacks

[Voltar]

Agreed, exploit should not be used in PBEM

[SlowThinker]

Originally posted by Nilat
shame if some people get an idea from this now and begins to use it

Why shame?? Now after Atze published the trick anybody can suggest it is forbidden in PBEM's house rules, can't he?

[Nilat]

Some few maybe knew this originally and out of common courtesy probably did not use it (too much ). As house rules do not come to your house when you're playing a turn and pointing a gun at you, people can easily break them without really being caught. We are basically adding yet another trust on players. This is OK for experienced players but newer players will have problems coping with all of these. Sure, I am glad we do not like it, but bringing it out in the first place disgruntles me a bit.

[SlowThinker]

It sounds odd for me ... some (PBEM) people ("more trustworthy") knew the trick and concealed it from other people ("less trustworthy")?

But my main point is - if I wanted to cheat then I wouldn't use this trick but I would open the game in SP mode and reveal ALL the map in a cheat mode !
And it was only an example, Civ2 is full of holes and a game must be always based on trust.

[Historical Atze]

But my main point is - if I wanted to cheat then I wouldn't use this trick but I would open the game in SP mode and reveal ALL the map in a cheat mode !

I just wanted that everyone knows about this so that you can talk about whether to use it or not. I don't think that I did something wrong by letting everybody know. As Slowthinker said: If you do want to know the enemy's forces and do not care if you have to cheat then the civ2-integrated cheat mode would be the best option because then you also see the type of units.

[rah]

Actually I'm glad you brought it up. It's always good to know what's possible because then open discussions can be had.

Yes the game is full of holes and TRUST is required.

I used to save every turn when we had a newb join us just so I could go back and see if they were using any of the exploits that were banned. (like the non-unit creation bug) But as I got older I felt it wasn't worth the effort to do it and now solely rely on trust.

[Nilat]

After incidents with me, Stephan and Darius, trusting is a bit harder in the civ2 community.

[rah]

You're just playing with the wrong group of people

Our friday night group has been accusation free for years. We've even invited some of these people from across the country to visit in our houses to play face to face. (our wives thought this was a bit too trusting) But fun was had by all.

[Eivind IV]

I'm pretty tired of all these glitches to the game that people exploit. That beeing said this isn't the worst, as you can't actually indentify the units. But I still remember those infamous Darius tricks, such as "freezing" of planes to gain longer range and airbases as railroads. I tend to follow the rule that if it wasn't intended by the creators then don't use it! If everyone followed this then we wouldn't have to have all these individual rules for everything.

I respect that they accept this at the German forum, but I second a ban of it here. We don't need more of these redicilous tricks. Let's just play regular civ2!

[SlowThinker]

Originally posted by Eivind IV
I tend to follow the rule that if it wasn't intended by the creators then don't use it!

This is ambiguous. With this rule everybody would play with his own set of rules.
And take incremental rushbuy. Not intended by the creators, I suppose you don't use it (or you do? ), but most people take it as something natural.

I remember several years ago I wondered why PBEMs are played without clear rules. I don't know what happened with Darius exactly, but I suppose it was caused by a lack of rules?

[Nilat]

What happened with Darius is quite interesting really.. Before him the exploits he used were not generally known. He brought them out and it has since been rooted out mostly. People do not tend to cheat by using those kinds of exploits.. more like adding some numbers to the rules.txt. Then there is the single player cheat menu trick and there is really no concrete way of finding out who does that. Believe, I was EXTREMELY intrigued by it when I first figured it out but I had just cheated by breaking a house rule and caught so I promised never to do such a thing. Scare people and they won't do it again

How many people have repeated cheating?

[Peaster]

We have banned this in my Apolyton PBEMs (Seeds #1 and #2) but I think it has been accepted at CFC for GOTMs/etc.

I don't have a strong opinion on it. In SP, it removes some risk - and therefore some excitement - when attacking a city. But it is just a matter of opinion whether that makes the game better or worse.

Thank you, Historical Atze, for sharing it.

[battosai]

Excuse me, but I don't share the point of view of all of you. In the German PBEM community this trick is in common use for a couple of years, as Atze said. And all it brought until now was a benefit for the gameplay. In scens as Bonaparte for example everyone could know the size of the army which invaded his country - and could wage how to divide his troops among the different theatres/front parts. The result: much more strategical calculation was possible. And in contrast to blackcklicking it's just realistic to know the size of a foreign army which can be seen by an own unit. I would find it much more annoying to send 50 worthful units away to catch a 2-units stack of my enemy or lose 50 worthful units against an attacker stack of 60 (where all the artillery survives) cause I did not know how much defenders I need min.

Play a Boney as a French and fight against Britain, Prussia, Austria and Spain at the same time, then tell me again that we talk about a cheat.

[Eivind IV]

You do have a point there, battosai. It might be useful for certain scenarios..

[Nilat]

Yes, of course. Compromise is a great thing which I tend to forget This technique can emphasise stealth a bit more. By this I mean that you do not want to expose your units as much, because people will see right away if it is a threat or not. Makes it more strategic. However, for some scenarios may not be very good.