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Closing Overly Exploited Features and Loopholes
One of the reasons many veterans of Civ2 find the game unchallenging is that they have found and overly exploited many features and loopholes. These features and loopholes are exploited to a degree that can never be matched by the AI. For the game to be fun and challenging, all of these loopholes must be closed forever. This is a short list but hopefully makes the point clear. (I also realize that some of these features are not going to be in Civ3 so this is mostly to make the case more convincing.)
1. We Love the King Days - This makes for explosive population growths which are unbalancing and unrealistic and is clearly overly exploited. WLTKD should be banned completely!
2. Hanging Bombers prevent land attacks - Human players use it all the time but I have never seen the AI use it. It is stupid anyway but if the AI can't use it and the HP over exploits this features, perhaps it should be banned!
3. Infinite Movement RRs - self-explantory
4. Certain Wonders - There are certain wonders which are simply too powerful and something needs to be done about them. Michaelangelo's Chapel and JS Bach's come to mind to Civ2. If you have both, then you can move to Democracy very early in the game in outpace the computers in science easily (This would not be a problem however if the computer practiced "balance of power", see separate thread for details).
5. ZOC Avoidance using Diplomats/Spies - This should be changed so that ZOC is still enforced for military units to prevent you from moving military units into an area where ZOC would prevent you from occupying that tile if your spy was not there.
6. Rush buying - Needs to be tweaked as humans can exploit it in ways the AI cannot.
All right, that's it for now.
The point is that any feature or loophole should be examined to see whether the AI and HP can both exploit it equally. If the HP can but the AI cannot, then that feature should be tweaked or eliminated! What is the point to add features/loopholes that only make the HP beat the game more easily but which the AI simply does not use???
One of the things that I hope they really, really do well in playtesting is not only in hunting for bugs but also for the playtesters to hunt for loopholes that can be overly exploited so that all these loopholes can be closed!
1. We Love the King Days - This makes for explosive population growths which are unbalancing and unrealistic and is clearly overly exploited. WLTKD should be banned completely!
2. Hanging Bombers prevent land attacks - Human players use it all the time but I have never seen the AI use it. It is stupid anyway but if the AI can't use it and the HP over exploits this features, perhaps it should be banned!
3. Infinite Movement RRs - self-explantory
4. Certain Wonders - There are certain wonders which are simply too powerful and something needs to be done about them. Michaelangelo's Chapel and JS Bach's come to mind to Civ2. If you have both, then you can move to Democracy very early in the game in outpace the computers in science easily (This would not be a problem however if the computer practiced "balance of power", see separate thread for details).
5. ZOC Avoidance using Diplomats/Spies - This should be changed so that ZOC is still enforced for military units to prevent you from moving military units into an area where ZOC would prevent you from occupying that tile if your spy was not there.
6. Rush buying - Needs to be tweaked as humans can exploit it in ways the AI cannot.
All right, that's it for now.
The point is that any feature or loophole should be examined to see whether the AI and HP can both exploit it equally. If the HP can but the AI cannot, then that feature should be tweaked or eliminated! What is the point to add features/loopholes that only make the HP beat the game more easily but which the AI simply does not use???
One of the things that I hope they really, really do well in playtesting is not only in hunting for bugs but also for the playtesters to hunt for loopholes that can be overly exploited so that all these loopholes can be closed!
[*]i agree about infinate RR. especially with "sparatic ai movement"[*]maybe the two combined are a bit much, but how easy is it to get both? (i really don't focus on that area of the tech trree early on)[*]i agree, ZOC should not allow a legion to move onto a diplomat/caravan if enemy/peace unit is touching.[*]the AI is given fawking improvements. leave rush buying alone. add a "partial payment" like in AC. need queue.[/list=1]
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