Great Library: Player Cheats

[Scouse Gits]

I see what you mean about the incremental buying of city improvements. My comments referred to the considerable savings possible starting from an empty shield box.

The following are cheats/anomalies that you may wish to add to your list:

a) Aqueducts/ Sewer Systems. These improvements can be sold when a city has reached the limit of its growth, without any detrimental effect to the population. It seems absurd that a 24 city can sell an aqueduct that was essential when it was only a third of the size.

b) Wonder Shield Stores. This involves saving shields for a wonder that has already been built, in readiness to buy one that is required.


c) Naval Bombardment of inland squares. The game makes a feature of the limited defence ships have whilst docked in a city. (Greeks catch Mongol ships in port etc.) However, a ship in port can attack squares that are land locked. Great for blowing away a partisan fortified on a mountain when the city has just fallen – but was this the original intention?

d) City investigations. When a spy/diplomat snoops around a city they can gain information that is beyond the city limits. By clicking on the map button the extent of that civilisation’s discovery about the world is revealed.

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Scouse Git (2)

[Xin Yu]

You can tell if a city is walled by looking at its icon. Walled cities have 'walls' in the icons.

This is not a cheat, I believe, but an 'undocumented feature'. However according to some hardliners, if you use undocumented feature you are cheating. You have been warned. Hehehe.

[Ming]

Yeah... and cities with nobody home don't get to fly the flag. Isn't it great when that flag drops during battle, showing the city is now empty.

A lot of free information is indeed provided.

Keep those cheats coming guys!

[Scouse Gits]

I've heard rumours that the colour of the city may tell you who owns it. So information is POWER!

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Scouse Git(2)

[DaveV]

Ming,

I posted before about Matthew's observation that two cups will change a very unhappy citizen to happy (should change to unhappy, IMHO). I think this should be included in section 8 (the corporal Klinger section?). Prior observation: building more cities can make cities happier, instead of the reverse. New observation - moving troops out of cities can make them happier with HG.

[DaveV]

And another one for section 1: trade maps with an AI. If you move the cursor over any of his cities, the window below the world map will show which units are stationed in that city. I assume this would work the same in MP.

[SmartFart]

3.4 - in UCC,you can transfer your units from ship to ship only once per turn.

I can also confirm that 'Buy a temple than switch to whatever' indeed works fine in UCC.

[Rasputin00]

some of the comments in this thread show yet again that many people are utilising the loopholes in the game and dont want them to be stopped, Xin Yu comments re City icons is one such facetious comment. Whast this thread needs is more honest people to post what they have seen, not for it to be filled with people trying to hide the cheating behind all these facetious comments ....

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Rasputin The Mad Monk, Lover of the Russian Queen

[Stefu]

This is a rather weird cheat I noted in Civ2... you all propably have had problem where enemy city overlaps your city, right? I always tend to starve those anomalities off the face of Earth, and then build settlers to establish city to a bit better place. However, it seems, if you manage to starve city and build a settler same turn, the town is destroyed but you get a "citizens are starving" message which allows you to view a city. If you click on it, it transports your view to nearest city, and if that is enemy city, you are allowed to watch it. And that's not all. You can disband armies, change productions, transform all citizens to Elvii, anything you can do in your own city.

I'm not sure if that was the exact process, but it has happened to me for couple of times. Someone ought to find out what exactly is the process-

[Ming]

Rasputin00... Your comments about Xin Yu are insulting. The city wall question actually came up in a thread in the Civ Strategy Section. Some people didn't know it.
Xin Yu has been a leader in developing formulas for trade routes, and providing other insightful information about how the game works. He has also ran across many of the cheats or variances in the game, and has brought them to everybodies attention.
He knows more about the game of civ than anyone I know. He is also one of the most honorable players, and one of the best.

Take back your rude implication...

This thread was established so that all the honest players could get a list of all the possible cheats. Many people have contributed their knowledge to insure that everybody knows how the rules can be abused.
It is here for people to use to help them determine what rules they want to use when playing MP games.

I've received a lot of email and icq thanking me for putting it together. It is the best list available anywhere. I did this more for the Civ II community, then for any help it might provide in developing CivIII.

WE ALL NOW KNOW WHAT CAN BE DONE, AND HOW TO AVOID PROBLEMS DURING MP GAMES.

And I will continue to keep this thread active, even when the list process is done.
So if you have any information to help make the list better... Fine, I welcome it.
But please don't insult the people like Xin Yu, and others who are helping me put this guide together.

[Rasputin00]

Ming there was not one insulting thing said about Xin Yu, what I said was that it looked rather a facetious comment saying a city icon with walls showing is a city with walls. If this is a problem to him then I apologise , but I still stand by my comments that too many people are trying to hide behind a wall of humour that there is a lot of cheating going on, You cant honestl;y say that no one realised that a city with no flag was empty, or ther next comment by some one who said the clour of flag tells nation, these are the type of comments clouding the waters. It seems you take umbrage too quickly and fail to realise we are all entitled to our opinion.

You called me a whiner in Civ 2 MP thread simply cause I believe that a lot of people are cheating , and you keep sticking up for Eyes of night a proven cheater at least twice, once is a test as he said , twice is del;iberate, it may have happened long ago, but for ages he argued it was only once, how many other times has he cheated but not been caught.... and then the second case appears....

I dont mind the personal abuse you throw my way I am big enough not to care, it would be better though for you not to get personal, as I have not done, and stick to the facts of this thread....

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Rasputin The Mad Monk, Lover of the Russian Queen

[Ming]

The facts are simple...
You haven't taken the time to read the entire thread. Try to say with a straight face that there is NOTHING you didn't learn from reading the entire summary. If you do say you knew it all, you are liar.

Somebody didn't really know about the city walls. Excuse me if you think you know everything... but some people don't.

And that is what this thread is for. It isn't meant to be a vehicle for you to personally attack somebody. I never insulted people for posting stuff that seemed obvious... but you did.

So stuff it.

You decided to take a few posts out of context, from a continued thread that had over 300 posts to develope the real summary.
It is the most comprhensive list available anywhere. Don't you dare slam this effort.

Either contribute (since you seem to think you know so much) or go away. Don't insult people. You are showing just how immature you are by defending your weak argument.

[Xin Yu]

Hey Ming, thanks for defending me. Now let me defend myself.
I was joking when saying that it was cheating to use the information of city walls in the game. Maybe because of culture difference other people couldn't understand the humour. This city wall thing should not come to this thread, but since we haven't got any news for a long time, I chose to put it here.

Good people use the contents of this thread to protect themselves, bad people use them to take advantage of other people. That's why this topic is popular. Great job, Ming.

[Ming]

Yes, this thread is a two edged sword.

While it can show people how to do things that many don't consider legal, it's real intent is to make people aware of what can be done against them. Just knowing some of these things allows people to set up "gentleman" rules when playing the game.

[Theben]

I'm cooking up a 'mega'-cheat myself, stay tuned...

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Theben
Co-Moderator of the Civ3 Forums