Apolyton Tournaments: Huts or no Huts?

[Comrade Tribune]

Originally posted by MarkG
i think only a tiny minority will try to cheat to "win"

beyond that, do you suggest we take an oath before downloading the tournament game or something?

Mark, I consider ANY save/reload cheating. And just about ALL high scores in this month´s game were achieved that way. People said so. Call it cheating or not, what we need is a clear agreement about save/reload.

The tiny minority you mentioned are most of the winners of the contest, so I wouldn´t really call that minority irrelevant.

[EEKthedog]

You can't control it nor prove if someone reloaded.

I remember this tetris-like game where you could buy savegames from your score

[Robert]

huts are a part of strategy as well.

[Roland Ehnström]

Leaving huts in will give players who like to reload and reload and reload and... an unfair advantage against others who like to simply play the game as it was supposed to be played. So take 'em out of tournament games, please!

Peace!
-- Roland

[tonyhaug]

hut mechanics

I say huts stay! I have played many games now, and I think the hut content is determined when you first expose it, not when you actually move on top of it. I have tried EVERYTHING to get a different result after the hut has been sighted and I always get the same content. And I have NEVER gotten a settler. In addition, I've found that battles work the same way. I have never been able to change the outcome of a battle by returning to the previous turn using a saved game. To change anything, I've had to return to a saved game from many turns prior and do something different, like produce numerous units instead of just one, or put a barracks in first, then produce the unit. And I have also discovered that if you want to eliminate an adjacent civilization, you MUST do it early in the game, before that civilizations capital has a population exceeding 6. I have never wiped out a civilization early in the game if I waited too long. Their defensive bonus after their capital reaches a population of 7 is just too great!

[MarshalN]

Ok, imagine this... there's a hut 3 squares from your only city (capital, early game). You open the hut, three barbs come out. They just happen to get lucky and kill your guy. They come in, take your worker, and then take whatever little money you had in your city. Now, you're a warrior, a worker, and a few gold behind everyone else. If someone plays expansionist, and they get lucky, you might even be a settler, a warrior, a worker, and a few gold down. That's a lot in the first few turns. If you don't reload, you probably lost the game considering the quality of players here. So, do you just proclaim yourself lost? Do you keep playing that game, waiting to get whatever unit you choose to produce and keep going? Or you restart the game and hope for a better outcome?

Take the huts out, and we don't have any of these problems/moral dilemmas.

[EEKthedog]

Tonyhaug, you are completely and 100% wrong.
It depends on when, and from what angle you approach the hut.

[Zealot]

Huts must stay! The game is designed that way! Who cares if there are some who keep reloading their games to get a better result? Shorten the tournament time! That will make them think twice about reloading, because the clock is ticking!

And after all, if we're here to have some fun, let's accept huts as a valid challenge, shall we? After all, not all who might get a settler from a hut will have the better scores!

[roadcage]

Huts afar

It appears that there are many folks with extremely hard set feelings about huts. Some like 'em, while others ****!

So I offer the following compromise

Archepego map

No huts on the originally populated islands

Huts on the other islands

Hence we have huts that cannot be opened until late enough in the game that the contents do not define the game.

Now Abe, just what would it take for you to trade away map making?

[Comrade Tribune]

Originally posted by MarshalN
Ok, imagine this... there's a hut 3 squares from your only city (capital, early game). You open the hut, three barbs come out. They just happen to get lucky and kill your guy. They come in, take your worker, and then take whatever little money you had in your city.

This is exactly what happened in my game of the month.

(Except for the Worker: He saw the Barbs coming, and had the good sense to run! )

Did I save/reload? No. I simply played on, and got a score of 3784. So what´s the problem?

[MarshalN]

The problem is this is a tournament and good/bad luck like that shouldn't be able to affect the player's score. Doesn't matter what you got, but matters when you're comparing your score with someone else's. I didn't say we should take huts out of Civ3 entiretly, did I? This is just about the tournament.

[Ghengis Brom]

Yes to Huts

Particularly Pizza and Jabba

Seriously though, yes to huts.

Me at work ------>

[Capt Dizle]

I would leave the huts in and specify that no reloading is allowed.

[jimb0v2]

sigh why don't people realize that doesn't stop anything most people are honorable, but SOME aren't. And it is IMPOSSIBLE to tell the difference.

[jimb0v2]

Originally posted by Comrade Tribune


This is exactly what happened in my game of the month.

(Except for the Worker: He saw the Barbs coming, and had the good sense to run! )

Did I save/reload? No. I simply played on, and got a score of 3784. So what´s the problem?

The problem is that a TON of people wouldn't just except such an earlier loss, since they can easily just reload or start over and justify it by saying"eh, its not cheating because someone else wouldn't have had that same detriment"