Apolyton Tournaments: Huts or no Huts?

[MarkG]

should we take huts out of future tournament games to make results less dependent on luck?

[EEKthedog]

If you get huts in, all the games will start with trying to find the right combo to start with an extra settler = early ownage.

[Fleche]

Might as well say, "Don't play a civ with Expansionist trait"....Huts are just about the only good thing for a Expansion civ.

[Achnor]

I think I'd rather be without the huts. There is just to much chance. In a single player game the huts are great but in a tournament the outcome can result in very big differences between games, especially if encountered early in the game.

Achnor

[Ahlyis]

In the current tournament, I've been using an underhanded tactic. Find a hut, save the game. Get the hut. If I didn't get something good, reload the game and wait til the next turn. Then save the game and try again. Keep doing this until you get something you like from the hut.

If you are already conducting war, you can speed this up. Save the game, then check the hut. Reload if it wasn't good. Fight one battle, save the game and check the hut again. Keep doing this until you find what you want from the hut.

This may be extremely cheesy, but it's not against the rules AFAIK.

So if you take the huts out, that removes the whole possibility of exploiting them. I vote to take them out.

[Eli]

It's part of the game, and it always was part of the game.
Barbarians also come randomly, why dont we disable them too?

[Achnor]

Barbarians are equally negative for everyone (except for the 25 gold you get from razing their base) but huts can be either negative or positive...

Why do we f.eks. have equal startingpositions? Why don't we just start a game ourselves with the agreed conditions? I'm sorry but the huts have to go

Achnor

[gus_smedstad]

I'm OK with huts. I'm not really playing to "win" against other people here, just to get a chance to discuss how we played a common setup. I'd never do something as cheesy as save / reload to get better hut results, but I don't care if others do. Sure, it's not interesting to discuss strategy with someone who descended to that level, but I wouldn't expect they'd have anything interesting to say to me anyway.

[smellymummy]

yes to huts!

I posted about this test somewhere else (forget where) so I'll write about it again.

In a few games where a hut was right beside my settler starting position I saved at 4000bc and tried 2 things:

moving a unit onto it
building a city

In each case it gave the same reward. So then I decided to reload the save game and try again. It was the same reward! And I did it again and again.

Is it the general opinion that huts are entirely random? I haven't seen any proof of such a thing: instead they appear to be seeded or rather have a set reward or barbarians. And since the tournament will start out of a save game what is there to not want. It's not like players will be able to cheat there way to get a free settler, and I'll have a good laugh at everyone who will sit there and reload 100 times only to see they won't get any settler

I might be wrong, but like I wrote, I have not seen anything to suggest otherwise to the fact that the goody huts are set upon the game creation.

[War4ever]

huts should be in....they provide more good then bad...especially in civ3.... at least in civ2 there was a chance you might die....my only units to lose in combat against barbs are conscript warriors/sets/workers..... nothing else.

as for the early nomad..... i have never seen one on a standard map after the first hut....therefore if someone wants to spend resources chasing the elusive nomad.....let them.....

taking huts out of the game eliminates some luck , but its not like you can rush build with the gold in a despot, and if your buying early techs then your playing the game wrong!

i would buy iron working and thats about it in the ancient era....the rest i just take from some poor hapless soul......

i would recommend barb level of raging to keep the human player honest and not allow him to exploit the despot era without at least making sure he takes more precautionary measures against barbarians....

just my two cents worth

[jimb0v2]

Originally posted by smellymummy
yes to huts!
It's not like players will be able to cheat there way to get a free settler,

Short Answer: Yes, players can and will be able to cheat there way to a free settler. It does not work the way you suggeted.

Long Answer: Huts are seeded as you suggested. If you open a hut after a battle or after a turn you will net a different result. However if you open the hut by moving a unit on to it or buiilding a town to consume the hut you will get the same thing as long as no battles or turns were taken differently.

I ackwoledge gus's point about not really caring, but I feel like if we are going to have a tournament we mide as well try and make it as fair as possible. Personally I also think we should allow reloading of battles and such, sense there is no way to stop it. But I realize that logic has flaws. Also, please do not restrict the victory type. Part of the fun is sseeing which victory type nets the most points. I think my changing the starting conditions we will make other strategies more viable.

[Comrade Tribune]

I didn´t answer the poll, because I think what we really need is a honor system.

I am not concerned about bad luck, but cheating. I don´t save/reload, because I think it´s unfun. However, if others do, I will be at an extreme disadvantage. Therefore, I won´t compete, if we can´t agree on some sort of honor system.

[MarkG]

Originally posted by Comrade Tribune
Therefore, I won´t compete, if we can´t agree on some sort of honor system.

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?

[Master Marcus]

yes to huts, they're part of the game and the luck factor is moderately controlled if the tournament civ is NON-Expansionist. I always noticed ( but only a few games so far ) at Restless a "barbarian uprising" but none yet at Roaming.

[smellymummy]

Originally posted by jimb0v2
Long Answer: Huts are seeded as you suggested. If you open a hut after a battle or after a turn you will net a different result. However if you open the hut by moving a unit on to it or buiilding a town to consume the hut you will get the same thing as long as no battles or turns were taken differently.

Thanks for pointing that out, I tried it out, and I netted a settler on my second try (while the first was 25 gold). So much for that.

Maybe we should take an oath:

I will play this civ3 apolyton tournament game without cheating in any way, without exploiting the game at all. Cheating is for the bad, the mean, the evil, and if I fall to this low, may my mouse hand forever be limp.

just an idea

[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 Plomp]

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]

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]

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]

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"