IFE - Infinite Forest Exploitation

[barefootbadass]

Re: This isn't an exploit

Originally posted by Strollen
I am pretty sure Firaxis intended forest to be used as a way of rushing production.

From the Civ3 manual Rush Jobs
To rush a job without using either of these costly methods, you normally have two options [ disband units]... The other methods is to clear forests in the city 's radius. The resources gaine from this action go straight into the contrstuction project.

Yeah, I forgot about this final nail in the coffin of the idea that this is a 'cheat' that firaxis didn't foresee. In order for chopping to be a reliable way to rush stuff the forests must be a renewable resource. They only give you 10 shields a forest and if you were limited to the forests present at the beginning of the game or only allowed to harvest a square every 10 turns or something, you can hardly call it 'rushing'.

[Surgeon]

My $0.02.

It's not a cheat. Clearing a forest to the ground would give a hella lotta wood.
Planting a forest and clearing it is quite an investment of manpower.
Considering one turn is often many years of real time I dont see why a rush of workers couldnt get a planting done faster.

I may be wrong but I have no problem with it. Just like I had no problem with the caravan rush of Civ2.

[Eli]

But it's boring... All you do is pressing the forest&deforest keys...

[Grumbold]

It is a perfectly viable strategy, and if I was playing MP I suppose I would have to use it to operate at peak efficiency. What bugs me is that Sid/Firaxis always talk about reducing micromanagement and repetitive redundant features. I can't think of anyhthing more repetitive than telling your hundred captured workers to chop/plant every turn. Utterly tedious. If only they hav taken the time to code in a lumberjacking colony that did the job automatically and could not be multi-stacked then you would have the sensible choice of squeezing extra shields out of the tiles or converting them to fertile plains. You could not have a single tile generating as many shields as your slave force can generate.

[Capt Dizle]

Lumberjacks is mind numbing. It works but it is NOT fun.

Anyone else want the supply crawlers back? Caravans? Spies?

Civ3, a devolution in gaming.

[Neon Deon]

If you view lumberjacking as tedious micromanagement, then dont do it. If you like micromanagement then do it. It is your option. AS far as coruption goes. Build courthouses,habors to connect to your capitol and make them big enough to use wltkd for your far flung cities. This beats the heck out of civ 2 and 0 waste under a democratic goverment hands down!

[Surgeon]

Originally posted by Eli
But it's boring... All you do is pressing the forest&deforest keys...

Then dont do it! play on a lower difficulty, jeez.

[Johnny_Vegas]

"don't do it" is not a solution

The biggest argument for loyal fans of a game defending it from people complaining about bug exploitation is "just don't do it". That's a fine argument for single player, but when multiplayer comes out it is NOT a good argument. Because in multi-player its very difficult to get everyone to agree to a list of things "not to do". That's why its always better if the company fixes the problem.

Tournaments, multiplayer, GOTW competitions, etc... Are all useless when bug exploitation determines who wins/loses.

In the game Disciples by Strategy First, there was an exploitation that I found a week after its release. Basically you could have your theif unit steal stuff, and then turn around and sell it back to the store, over and over and over, making it free money. I complained about this in the forums and people told me to just DONT DO IT, until I brought up the point of the multiplayer tournament coming up and said that the people that don't exploit the thief "bug" will lose to those that do. Even the developers told me things like "Well some people like that to earn easy money if they are behind" and other such nonsense.

The fact is if you plan on making your game a competitive game, you have to fix all the design flaws such as the infinite forest exploitation. Players should not be rewarded for doing such a thing. It would force everyone to do it in multiplayer, or have everyone make a "gentleman's agreement" not to do so, which is lame.

[Surgeon]

News flash: There is no multiplayer and I dont care!

Gentlemens agreements are lame? It's more the people that dont stick by them that are the problem. Its ****wits like those that have ruined every sociable multiplayer game yet.

[HHughes]

Perhaps a fix for this would be taking corruption into account on the particular harvest. But otherwise I see at as a farily valid strategy. Whats wrong with lumberjacking?? It happens in the real world!!

[sabrewolf]

i don't think this thread should be listed in the directory anymore, for the exploit has been fixed in one of the earlier patches (v1.07f? v1.16f?)

[DaveMcW]

This thread was buried with all the other earlier patch threads, not bothering anyone until you bumped it up by replying.

Why delete it when you can just ignore it on the back pages?

[vmxa1]

You are both right. He just wants it deleted from the directory of must read threads. That makes sense as it is no longer a must read. An email is the best way to do it, not a post.