An idle thought on the loss of cheat mode

[ajbera]

I never used to do this, so my ramblings are all hypothetical.

Civ2 players could enter cheat mode to give themselves techs, units, gold, etc., for cheating in the truest sense, and I'm certain that many used cheat mode in this manner.

Players could also use cheat mode to give the AI players units, gold, techs, etc., so as to make the AI tougher opponents, and make the Civ2 game a more challenging experience during the course of the game. I am positive many, though not nearly as many as the former group, did this too.

But how many players used cheat mode to augment the AI in a logical, "what if" fashion, during the course of, say, a scenario. For instance, playing as the Germans in a WW2 scenario, the player manages to invade and conquer London. The player might think over the global situation a bit, and come to the conclusion that English farmers, etc., would band together to form militias to help fortify the ground between London and the remaining cities. The player then opens cheat mode, makes some partisan/militia units and fortifies them in a couple of locations in English territory, simulating patriotic defense among English civilians. The player then continues to play as the Germans, his game enriched by the addition of (in his eyes) a touch of realism.

I know this is a weird example, but a thread I just read concerning scenarios and campaigns made me think of this. You could make your own campaign by using cheat mode during the course of a single game to adjust the rest of the world and players based on the outcomes of your game. If you take objective city X, there should be fewer defenders in this mountain pass, so use cheat mode to make the changes. Didn't take city X or city Y? Beef up those mountain pass defenders. Goofy little things like that.

Well, since Civ3 is shipping without cheat mode, you couldn't adjust the map/AI in the course of a game. Yoy would have to make a scenario for any minor change you wished to make.

Again, since I don't use the cheat mode (I prefer losing with dignity, thank you very much), this doesn't affect me in the slightest. It was just an errant thought.

[SteveJH]

How many people actually *did* use cheat mode against themselves? While you have a good point, if I'm winning I probably wouldn't do this even to add a challenge. This might make a good poll subject but would belong in the CivII forum I believe.

[Sarxis]

In Alpha Centauri, the map editor was just as good as a cheat mode- it let you manipulate anything in the game, and everything! (except for rules, which could be done with some text editing). All you had to do was activate the editor in the middle of a game (or start a new one) and you could change money, bases, units, terrain...

From what I have heard, CivIII will be coming with a comparable editor, so I wouldn't get too disappointed about not cheating.

[Executor]

The only time I used cheat mode was to get a quick look at the world map, then promptly reloaded my game so that annoying cheat message didn't appear on my civ score.

[Bill3000]

Executor: I did that too!

Anunikoba: I hope that's what they mean.

[Juggernaut]

Yeah, I miss heaping a dozen of nukes at my enemies when all hope of solving the conflict in an honest way is gone.

[Akron]

I used the cheat mode to make it so that there was no human player, barbarian map, and then sim the game until around 1950 when I'd take over one of the civs and start playing in the modern age, which I always found to be the most enjoyable.

[Case]

Originally posted by SteveJH
How many people actually *did* use cheat mode against themselves?

Me I use the cheat mode to give the AI a boost in the later stages of the game (eg I give the AI some extra cities)

[Sean]

I'm afraid I never saw the point of cheating...except for the odd reload of course...

[SteveJH]

Originally posted by Case


Me I use the cheat mode to give the AI a boost in the later stages of the game (eg I give the AI some extra cities)

Why didn't you just give them a city in the heart of your empire via the diplomacy screen?

[Boris Godunov]

I will miss the cheat mode, unless the editor is so robust that it compensates for everything.

I would use the cheat mode if I wanted to balance out a situation. I always liked to try and get all 7 civs to the end as fairly equal, strong civs. So I would use the cheat mode to intervene in wars to make sure one civ or the other didn't get too powerful.

And when a civ really pissed me off, I would screw around by magically having 100 cruise missles appear in the center of his empire, and using them to eliminate every unit he had in one turn. Hehehehehehe

Cheers.

[Blake]

I used the scenerio editor (cheat menu under a different name) in SMAX quite a lot, mainly when I was doing small scale mods / scenerios and wanted to see how the AI was coping at certain points during the game.

Then again if the AI is done right prehaps I wont be spending so much time playing around trying to tweak the AI's play

(Note, i never actually gave AI stuff during a game, altough on the first turn I sometimes terraformed their territory and/or gave extra colony pods / formers)

[orange]

Originally posted by SteveJH


Why didn't you just give them a city in the heart of your empire via the diplomacy screen?

What version of Civ II did you have?

[Grumbold]

I always used to map peek just to check the game was going to be worth playing. Hopefully Civ III's continents will be good enough to make that redundant. Certainly the screenshots which have included the worldview have looked encouraging.

[Grim Legacy]

I never used it in-game. I have extensively used for creating scenario's though. I have faith in the abilities of the new Editor.