Should the next AU course come before or after a patch?

[nbarclay]

Which other thread? If there's been some discussion on possible workarounds for the GPT bug, I'd be interested to see it.

I recognized the problem of getting 50% of an AI's gold in one deal and then 50% of what's left in another before I posted. But between increased purchasing power for the top AIs and decreased gold for humans, such a rule would at least mitigate the bug's damage. Trading two techs and a luxury to get 7/8 of an AI's gold isn't as bad for the AI as getting 8/8 of the AI's gold for a single tech. Also note that the multiplicative effect helps compensate for the fact that if an AI gets full value at half price, that shifts the balance of advantage in the AI's favor.

I came up with another approach that is even more elegant from a technical perspective, but didn't post it earlier because it is tougher to implement. The basic idea would be to sell techs for 60% of what an AI is willing/able to pay and then treat the AI as if the other 40% did not exist for the 20 turns of the deal. Thus, human players would get 20% more gold for their GPT deals than they would under normal rules, while AIs would get to keep 40% of the gold they would have paid. In practical terms, the procedure for a deal would be something like:

1) Find out how much GPT the AI has available. (The transition to "would never accept the deal" marks where an AI doesn't have the GPT to make a deal even if it wanted to.)

2) Calculate the total current GPT the civ is paying you and subtract 2/3 of that from the result of Step 1. (40% is 2/3 of 60%.)

3) Determine which is lower, the amount the AI is willing to pay or the amount from Step 2. Sixty percent of whichever is lower is the most GPT you can ask the AI for.

That way both the human player and the leading AIs end up better off financially than they would without the bug and workaround. It's not a perfect solution, but it provides a way to do GPT deals without completely upsetting the balance or providing an unfair advantage for more, smaller deals compared with fewer, bigger ones. Unfortunately, the calculations involved would be a bit of a pain, and I'm not sure how many AU players would want to go through that kind of hassle.

By the way, my biggest reservation about a rule against accepting GPT payments at all is that I routinely acquire luxuries by trading a tech for a lucury or luxuries plus whatever else I can get. In my second C3C game, I've been trying a self-imposed rule against trades involving GPT, and not being able to ask for GPT as part of my "whatever else" is proving to be very painful.

Nathan

[ducki]

That way both the human player and the leading AIs end up better off financially than they would without the bug and workaround.

But if your strategy is to impoverish the AI so they can't buy anything from anyone else, the whole idea of the House Rule completely removes this strat.
I know that I will often sell something for far less than it's worth just to keep the AIs poor to prevent upgrades, lux trades, etc.

Not that I'm not willing to play with a house rule, it's just that those posing solutions seem to be missing the point that the main idea of the previously posted strat is not to make money - it's to clean the coffers of the AI to keep the other AIs from selling them anything and to keep them from buying anything. It's the trade equivalent of pruning, and if you don't clean them out, it defeats the purpose of the strat.

Either way, it'll be a fun game, I just feel that in a search for a solution to the over-enrichment of the player, some of us are forgetting that AI impoverishment is often a very important strategy. Only taking half is equivalent to outlawing that strat.

What if there was another solution? Like units you can buy outright and then disband outside a city, bleeding off your extra income? Or an improvement that bleeds off x amount of GPT that every player starts with, or something like that?

Since house rules depend on the integrity of the player, why not allow the impoverishment of the AI strat, while giving the player someplace to honorably dispose of the extra income? Or is that just not doable with the current editor?

p.s. - Finally got Conquests, first epic start as Mayans, riverside, with 3 sugars on river. Whee!

[nbarclay]

Cash-rushing and disbanding units would be problematical in that it would waste production (since a city can't do something else at the same time it's rushing). Actually, the most technically precise solution of all would probably be to keep track of how much gold you have that you aren't supposed to and pretend you don't have it. For example, if you've gotten 6742 illicit gold through the course of the game, never allow yourself to drop below 6742 gold. It would be a pain adding the foreign income each turn to the running total of ill-gotten gains (probably by checking F1 for foreign income at the end of each turn and adding the amount to the running total), but no more so than keeping track of the same data for the purpose of wasting an equal amount of gold (e.g. through building and disbanding units). I think I'll try a game doing that and see how bad it really is.

That sounds like quite a start, ducki. Did you luck out like that right off the bat, or did it take some restarts to find a position you liked? (I have nothing against restarting to get a nice starting position; I'm just curious.)

[ducki]

Yeah, I didn't really mean "rushing" units, though I didn't explain it well. I actually mean some way to directly buy "something" that you could then destroy.

Or maybe a special building that only the player civ starts with that could bleed off gold? I dunno. Just trying to think of something that would work without crippling any strategy. I hope they do a critical-bug-patch soon, though.

That start was my very first "New Game" start. And it keeps getting better. City 2 is also on a river bordering plains on one side and grassland(some shielded) on the other. Then City 3 is on a river with a plains cow and will have another plains cow and wine once the border grows. Heh. Yet somehow that crazy dutchman beat me to Philosophy by 4 turns. Arg. Anyway, no restarts this time. Very first C3C epic start.

[lockstep]

Originally posted by nbarclay
Actually, the most technically precise solution of all would probably be to keep track of how much gold you have that you aren't supposed to and pretend you don't have it.

If you build Wall Street, you may also need to keep track of interest earned that you aren't supposed to possess.

[MrWhereItsAt]

/me feels a headache coming on..


Can't we just play it, warts and all, without any hideously complex solution to the gpt bug? If someone DOES come up with a good easy solution then terrific, but the issue seems more difficult all the time. At this rate, no matter the result of the poll, we will be trying to figure out a fix for so long the patch will be out already!

[Tassadar500]

Who's the wise guy who voted for AU sucks? I do agree with WIA here. Play it with it's problems. What's the worst that could happen?

[Conqueror]

Yes, lets play it. At first i voted after, but now i think it could be played after all, because who knows when the patch fixing FP/GPT/RCP will be out.

I for myself have restrained from making any GPT deals in C3C with the AI so far, and could do that in this game aswell.

The FP thing wont hurt so much either, its just a bit more challenging when you are not able to build it. (dont get me wrong, i dislike the FP/GPT/RCP bugs and have mailed about those to atari folks)

In general, maybe just play it a level lower than usual, because of these bugs mainly increase the difficulty (if no GPT deals made).

[Harovan]

I voted "after".

Conquests is not only good, it is awesome by the game concept. I have very high expectations on the fun and entertainment it will provide once it's ready. But the two big bugs spoil this feeling. Although I have it meanwhile, I will spend my time on creating scenarios. One of them the "Rebirth of Britannia", is almost ready. I may create and tinker with a map of Middle Earth afterwards. But I won't play an epic game until the game is patched, AU or not, and if that takes a month or two, so be it. It would frustrate me right now, and that is not what I would expect from an otherwise very good game.

[Cort Haus]

I voted a resounding no to an AU course on the current C3C. It might satisfy some eager impatience, but can only dilute the quality of the AU. Catt has articulated this excellently, I thought, so I do not need to repeat the arguments.

I haven't had the chance to play C3C yet, but a two-minute glance at the wish list says that the epic game ain't ready yet. It might feel like Santa didn't show up, but lets be honest - we run the risk of wasting our time if we are trying to educate ourselves on broken training material. Time perhaps alternatively spent on a conquest, or even a PTWDG

However, the fun of playing a collective game doesn't need the sober stamp of the AU - so just set up a game along whatever lines people are into - post it up and let people informally share it. Just don't call it an AU course - pleeease. Or, use some of that time you would happily spend on an AU course now to help out your DG team, so that when Conquests is finally ready, your team-mates may have the chance to enjoy the AU course too!

[Theseus]

I changed my mind a few days ago, btw... having actually played an epic game pretty far in, I found the corruption bugs to be just too damn annoying.

I'm gonna stick to the PTW demogames and the Conquests for the moment.

Let's wait for a patch before an official AU game.

[MrWhereItsAt]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
I voted a resounding no to an AU course on the current C3C. It might satisfy some eager impatience, but can only dilute the quality of the AU. Catt has articulated this excellently, I thought, so I do not need to repeat the arguments.

So you guys DO regard this as a superior sort of competition? I thought the idea was that AU courses were a nice, friendly, informal sort of thing. The site's reputation is not at stake, nor is there money to be lost. Perhaps none of us should play Epic Games at ALL until the patch.

There is plenty to be learned in an AU game even pre-patch. I honestly do not understand the reticence here. Perhaps we could even just try a scenario where corruption is not going to be as much an issue - try to achieve a different set of objectives perhaps.... The corruption bug is a little bit of a bugger but hardly what I would call devastating. I wouldn't be too surprised if it was not regarded as a bug by Breakaway and stayed!

/me does not want to wait months for the first patch before getting a chance to start with AU

[Tassadar500]

Let's see. The only scenario where the corruption bug doesn't matter is: OCC

[vmxa1]

It matters not a whit to me, but I think one of issues is that there may be nothing of value to learn as the current state is problematic.
I am not sure that this is true and what if it take 3 or more months and maybe they do not agree that corruption needs fixing?
So I am fine going ahead or waiting.

[Tassadar500]

Oh and just so everyone knows. I want every single one of the 42 of you that voted. Except that smart ass that voted AU sucks! Here's what we'll do. We will wait untill the patch is out. Now that may be a considerably long time. How bad is the C3C MP? If it's not that bad maybe we could have an AU MP tournament and each player posts logs and whatever. All we would need is to make sure the other players won't look at the other players logs.