I think i may have a new strategy???

[thorpey]

Originally posted by des-esseintes
Jesus, you actually get gameplay satisfaction from fooling the incompetent AI with such cheap tricks? It's akin to cheating in solitaire.

Wait until MP comes out, and then play it. Myself, i stopped playing vanilla Civ3 after my 3rd game or so, when I realized what a jackass the AI was. And giving it percentile boosts in production and research doesn't make it any tougher IMO..

No, I said I hadn't used such 'cheap tricks', you shouldn't
need to anyway. It's a last resort I've never needed.

If the game allows something then why is it an exploit
anyway? It is a game after all...

[jshelr]

Exploit Defined: You know you've done it when you've done it.

Confession: Playing Egypt against killer civ Greece, I got tanks first. Greece had something like $20,000 gold and lots and lots of cities. I proceeded to take cities and leave them lightly defended. Greece would then send over a couple of cavs and take them back. Each repeated takeover resulted in something like $300/400 gold. A nice little income resulted that let me build a tech lead while taking down the only large civ left on the map. Was this gradual torture of Greece an exploit. Yes. A perfect AI would see what was happening and stick to defending the cities that it might save. I felt bad about the win and had therefore wasted my own time. Stupid. Exploits are stupid because they spoil your own fun.

[Lucarse]

Re: Re: Re: Re: I think i may have a new strategy???

Originally posted by Barchan
Good Lord, man, those workers have shovels! *I* certainly wouldn't want to mess with them.

nice one.... oh no marines holding sticks with nails in them...run away ........

Maybe their should be a 'scare the crap out of them' or surrender feature?
30 tanks appear in front of your fox hole? what would you do... guns down hands up i expect.

I'd make a crap soldier.

[Lucarse]

Arrh exploit schmexploit, I had a real battle i lost to superior numbers (defended choke points got over run) i used the only tactic left to my disposal throw everything i had left at them 'workers'!.

Putting non trained troops or other non-coms into the battle front to delay a advance is a well used real life tactic, (Hitler Youth anyone) so hardly and exploit,

I put the workers in as a 2-3 tile thick shieldaround the city, soaked up the turns no distraction the AI or human player would have had to take the workers to get to my city.(ok maybe the human palyer would just bypass the city) anyway it worked, i stand by it Humpf!

[JohnM2433]

Originally posted by Lucarse
(ok maybe the human palyer would just bypass the city)

That's what makes it an "exploit": you're deliberately taking advantage of the AI's stupidity.

Retaking cities as jshelr described is also another type of exploit: taking advantage of the way the game works. In this case, part of Greece's treasury was essentially magically transported to the cities after they took them. Now, there's no real need for them to distribute money evenly throughout their empire, and it would be far more realistic for the city to build up its own cash reserve over time. But this is not how the game works.

AI cheats are an imprecise analog to human exploits. In each case, one player does something another cannot. The AI "cheats" when it gets to do something the game interface doesn't allow the human to do. If the AI simply pracitices better tactics than the human, however, I would not call that an exploit. The reason I regard this as fair is that I think of humans as being able to learn and change their strategies; in short, we are "free" to do whatever we choose.

Human exploits are different, because there is no clear boundry between the AI and the game itself, and thus no real distinction between stupidity and incapacity on the part of the AI. That is, there's no difference between the AI not being smart enough know what to do and simply lacking the ability to do it, because whenever the programmers design the AI to do something they give it both the knowledge and the capability required. If there is no function in the game which allows/causes the AI to imploy tactic X, does that mean the AI "can't" do X, or that it "doesn't know about it"? For the AI, there is no such distinction.

This raises some interesting thoughts in my mind. Suppose that there are some forms of reasoning so complex that the human brain is incabable of supporting them. In this case, there would be no clear distinction between stupidity (relatively speaking) and incapacity for the human, just is there is not for the AI. If a superintelligent computer were then to play a game against a human, it might then be considered an "exploit" for it to use such reasoning. After all, what is really important isn't that one player is a human and that the other is a computer, but that one is capable of doing something that the other is fundamentally incapable of doing, thus giving one of them an unfair advantage.

That got a little off topic, didn't it?

[Barchan]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: I think i may have a new strategy???

Originally posted by Lucarse
nice one.... oh no marines holding sticks with nails in them...run away ........

Ah, The Simpsons. Is there anything out there we can't find an appropriate quote from the show apply to?

Originally posted by Lucarse
Maybe their should be a 'scare the crap out of them' or surrender feature?
30 tanks appear in front of your fox hole? what would you do... guns down hands up i expect.

I'd make a crap soldier.

For the United Kingdom? Yes, you would. For Iraq? Why, you'd be perfect!

[Galvatron]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: I think i may have a new strategy???

Originally posted by Lucarse

Maybe their should be a 'scare the crap out of them' or surrender feature?
30 tanks appear in front of your fox hole? what would you do... guns down hands up i expect.

I'd make a crap soldier.

Well this is definitely also my idea. Why should you fight with a gun against tanks? No need to throw away your precious live and btw being captured by the enemy isn't that bad. You get food, accommodation and everything you need for free .

Ok back to topic. I think your strategy is great. Haven't really considered it yet but reading your post I think next time when I'm in trouble I will send my workers as shield.

[Lucarse]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: I think i may have a new strategy???

Originally posted by Galvatron
Ok back to topic. I think your strategy is great. Haven't really considered it yet but reading your post I think next time when I'm in trouble I will send my workers as shield.

Thanks my man finally a little appreciation! :-)

This is not an Exploit,...basically if you surround something with something you have to penetrate something to get into something... clear :-)

Human or AI would have had to soak up their turns clearing the sheild to get to the city i bought me some time not much but enough.

What pissed me off is i had an MPP with rome, i hit anarachy and they were on me like rabid dogs. I think anything is justified if thats going to happen.

[jshelr]

BTW, I tend to agree that this was not an exploit for two reasons:

1. you don't think so and it's your game
2 as you explain it, you've given the AI no option to take the city but to lose a little time by going through your workers. makes sense....a reasonable sacrifice, especially late in the game when workers are of less value

[Bangedup]

This is not an exploit but a legitimate tactic used througout history. One case in point is Japan's assault on China in WW2. China's population greatly outnumbered Japan, but that turned out to work against them. Japan was so brutal that it spread fear in a populace and every city they approached the population fled in a terror. As a result the Chinese Army was unable to reinforce their cities because the roads were choked with civilians.
You know who Dracula is right? His namesake is Count Drakul (spelling). The Huns were attacking his country and he knew he could not stop them. He took thousands of his own people and murdered them and impaled them on stakes on the road approaching his cities. The Huns so terrified by what this man could do to his own people refused to attack and instead retreated. Dracula: Hero or Villain?
The end result here is that using civilians to thwart an attack or defense is nothing new and certainly is not an exploit.
IMHO it was good thinking on your part and I admit to doing it myself. There is nothing wrong with using strategy or cleverness to beat the AI. It is in our nature to do so. If you believe using strategy to beat the AI is beneath you then why play at all?

[Lucarse]

Bangedup, I think the blokes real name was 'Vlad the Impaler'

I think hundreds of bodys on stakes would put the sh*ts up me.

[Fitz]

Good strat (and quick thinking) there Lucarse. Definately not an exploit, but rather clever use of your resources. Although it does point out the possible need for free worker/settler capture on railroads/roads.

BTW, I had to reread your original post. I too thought you were talking about the worker distraction tactic at first. Your worker human shield sounds like a brilliant (if brutal ) adaption to the circumstances that saved your bacon.