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sunshine
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Howdy y'all,
Found another lame ai exploit tonight and haven't seen anything posted about it, so I thought I would share it here. It's about as ethical as the million dollar bug, but takes advantage of the poorly implemented trade system.
Basically, if you have two or more of any resource (strategic or luxury items) you can get as much gold and as many techs as you want from the ai, as many times per turn as you have worker to build roads and units to destroy them. Fun, huh?
Station a bunch of workers on each resource (4 each should be enough for one round per turn). Add one military unit. When the turn starts, you will have a city with 2 resources and no roads. Build roads on each of the resources, then contact an ai and ask for a tech or gold in exchange for the resource. He will usually respond positively as long as you haven't attacked anybody. Then destroy the roads- poof- resource agreement is dissolved but you keep the tech and the gold.
Rebuild the roads, lather rinse repeat. As often as you want, even with the same ai civ in the same turn. This should make beating the game trivial, since it works on all levels and doesn't even require conquering a civ. Just get a little bit lucky with the resource placement, build a harbor, and fraud your way to world domination.
Sigh. You'd think with as much money as sid and such have made from these games, they would be able to hire a few competent people to test for these things... stuff like this shouldn't have made it through brainstorming, much less beta testing etc. 
shiny
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RTodd
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Austin, TX
Nov 2001
time: 23:16
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I noticed something similar, but not in regards to trade. I had roads built to resource rubber. During one war, the Aztecs came in and wiped out most of my infrastructure, including the road to rubber. However, I was still able to generate infantry, even though I no longer had access to that resource (it was the only rubber in my country). The manual states you need a road (or harbor or airport) to access resources, but shouldn't access go away if the corresponding route is destroyed?
T
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Hans2
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Mondovi, WI USA
May 1999
time: 05:16
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Um, or maybe its that this is a stupid thing to do and it didn't occur to them that someone would try it, just like the million dollar bug. You can't anticipate every loophole, but now that they know about it, they'll probably fix it.
I have an idea, how about you just not do this, since normaly there's absolutely no reason for you to do it anyway. Avoiding using this 'cheat' and ruining your game seems really simple to me. I geuss what I'm saying is I don't understand how this is such a big deal, or why your so dissapointed they failed to 'catch it' before release.
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Capt Dizle
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yin who else but you would be first to respond to this thread...nice catch sunshine....
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Pyrodrew
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quote:
I noticed something similar, but not in regards to trade. I had roads built to resource rubber. During one war, the Aztecs came in and wiped out most of my infrastructure, including the road to rubber. However, I was still able to generate infantry, even though I no longer had access to that resource (it was the only rubber in my country). The manual states you need a road (or harbor or airport) to access resources, but shouldn't access go away if the corresponding route is destroyed? |
From my experience only the current unit you are working on will be able to be finished. You will not be able to continue making additional units of that type once that 1 is completed. And IMO that works fine. At 1st you got the iron & made the weapon, the time it takes to complete is simply training that unit. When that unit is done, you have no iron & will not be able to make additional units of that type.
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Venger
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Keeper of the Can-O'Whoopass
Jan 1970
time: 23:16
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Ugh - another cheapy exploit.
You know, the problem with bugs like this and the 1000000 bug isn't that some human player figured them out, but they betray that the underlying system has serious flaws - and that we may not always see them as vividly as this. If the AI trade engine is so broken that it'll give me (Dr. Evil voice) ONE MILLION DOLLARS per turn or turn down an exchange of 100 of my gold for 10 of it, what else is it screwing up that you don't see on the surface?
Venger
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RTodd
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Austin, TX
Nov 2001
time: 23:16
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I *was* able to make additional units, and the resource *still* showed up as available, even though my only road to it was destroyed.
T
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RTodd
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Austin, TX
Nov 2001
time: 23:16
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I agree with that, yin....but I've shown only one rubber resource in cityview. If a city was sitting on one, would it state two?
I'll fire up a savegame and try and recreate.
T
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Pyrodrew
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quote:
I *was* able to make additional units, and the resource *still* showed up as available, even though my only road to it was destroyed. |
Finishing a current unit in production without a resource is not a bug, but if you were able to make multiple additional units from the same city without that resource then that is a bug.
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sunshine
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Nice insight, Venger. I agree. Hans, I guess I'm just venting the frustration that comes from waiting YEARS for something, and then being grossly disappointed by what seems to be a prehistoric throwback to a ten year old game which barely lives up to the mercantile aspirations of Activision, much less the innovations that came with SMAC and SMACx.
It's the same reaction I would have had if Quake 3 would have reverted to the 2-d Castle Wolfenstein engine- cynicism bred by apparent complacency on the part of people I trusted and respected. I refuse to be satisfied with something so obviously defective, coming from this company. If this had been just another civ knockoff, I would not complain; but this product, coming from Fireaxis, borders on intellectual treason.
That said, I'm gonna fire it up for one last try at a huge map deity win. Cheer for my Immortals...
shiny
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RTodd
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Austin, TX
Nov 2001
time: 23:16
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Man I need some sleep....found that I changed that particular requirement in the editor.
I now return you to your regularly scheduled thread.
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Malkuth
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Umm basically so what? I mean its not like a normal player is going to do this or somehing! You cant do it by accident right? This is the least of the worries the devs should we working on.
By what you explained takes work and time to do it. If people exploit it so what? Thier playing by themselves for crist sakes. Its not like this game has multiplayer.
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Venger
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Keeper of the Can-O'Whoopass
Jan 1970
time: 23:16
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Come on Malkuth - if the system is broken enough to let this happen, what is happening that you don't see? If I see that the bathroom at a restaurant is atrocious, what can I assume about the kitchen?
Venger
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Malkuth
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My point is thiers bigger and badder problems with the game right now. Basically Im sure if you looked hard enough you could find tons of stuff to do agaist the computer thats an exploit. For istance the 999999999 gold thing. It is just an AI anyway. But if they ever get multi play in then this will have to be stopped.
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Venger
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Keeper of the Can-O'Whoopass
Jan 1970
time: 23:16
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quote:
Originally posted by Malkuth
My point is thiers bigger and badder problems with the game right now. Basically Im sure if you looked hard enough you could find tons of stuff to do agaist the computer thats an exploit. For istance the 999999999 gold thing. It is just an AI anyway. But if they ever get multi play in then this will have to be stopped. |
Malkuth, the ONE MILLION DOLLARS bug (that has to be it's official name, please give me proper credit on it) is a problem not because it's an exploitable cheat, but because the rules system is broken enough to allow it.
If it will give me ONE MILLION DOLLARS on a turn, who's to say that the 10 it's giving me for trade for my silk is legit? We know that there apparently isn't a check that works on the AI to verify it has the right amount of money for that deal, so who's to say that it isn't screwing it up and making up money when it rush buys items? Is it just printing money? It betrays the fact that the system is broken, badly in a place. So it's not enough to say "just don't ask for ONE MILLION DOLLARS", because if it fails to make sure it's valid for a million, who's to say any of the other trades are any more valid? It's no longer trustworthy.
Venger
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Venger
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Keeper of the Can-O'Whoopass
Jan 1970
time: 23:16
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quote:
Originally posted by yin26
1) Programming errors are a part of the industry. Live with it or find a new hobby. |
I'm thinking of programming my own game.
quote:
2) If you are so perfect, why don't you program your own game? |
I couldn't live with the programming errors.
quote:
3) If you don't like the game so much, why don't you leave the forums? |
Because I'm just a whiner.
quote:
4) Firaxis wouldn't make the kinds of mistakes you are spouting without any reasonable basis. You are just a whiner. |
I have no right to whine because I didn't write the Civ3 code.
quote:
5) Unless you actually wrote the Civ3 code, you have no right whatsoever to say if it's working or not. |
I should probably leave the Civ3 forums...
Venger
P.S. Why is it not possible for people to understand that the criticism is offered in the hope it changes the game for the better?
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Grim Legacy
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War Machine, Barbaric King, Relentless, Remorseless, Guiltless and Unclean!
Aug 2001
time: 06:16
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quote:
Originally posted by LaRusso
okay. he actually found a cheat.
i am actually surprised that you are rejoicing since the whole situation speaks volumes about the mindset of some gamers (trying to break the game) than the firaxis programming.
you tell me how you would solve it
1) you cannot pillage your own squares (um, will that mean only roads?)
2) you somehow let AI know what you are doing. but how? how should they behave?
3) you take away the benefits ( you get only a fraction of the gold but what happens to the tech?)
there is no game that a human cannot distort if he really wants to. |
No this should be solved. It is simple to link the available resources to the active trades, like they are linked to production. The AI should react something like this:
1) "You seem to have become unable to deliver the reources you promised, we demand ### gold (/turn) in compensation. "
2) "No goods, no deal"
This would not only prevent the pillaging trick, but also make for a nice 'zing' to trade agreements: you have to really secure your resources or risk being penalized for losing them.
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14-11-2001 07:54
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