Civilization III - Evaluation of Moves - v1.2 - compiled by Sirian

INTENT

In order for players from Realms Beyond to organize group games and events, in which a prime concern is imposing our own additional rules upon the game in places where the game's own rules are flawed, corruptible, imbalanced or incomplete, it is necessary to examine and evaluate all known tactics. We must define our philosophy if we are to invite players to come and play within our style.

CATEGORIES

Honorable Tactics are moves that are within every civ's right to undertake, and are welcome in any RBCiv Epics game. Variant rules for a specific game may take some options off the table.

Dastardly Tactics are moves that betray, cheat or prey upon other civs, but within the context and spirit of the game. They are allowed by default, but scenario goals or variant rules for a specific game may disallow some or all dastardly tactics for a given game.

Exploitative Tactics fall outside the context of the game, even though loopholes in the rules allow them to occur within the game. These tactics are not to be used in RBCiv Epics events.

HONORABLE DIPLOMACY

Diplomacy involves all deals and agreements between civs, including peace terms.

Honorable Diplomacy allows for almost any deal-making, provided that you meet all of your commitments in the deal. Exception: alliances that lead to unprovoked declarations of war against a peaceable civilization, are not honorable, whether the proposal is yours or that of an AI civ. Going to the aid of a civ who has been attacked, or seeking aid against those who attack your civ, are honorable. Neutrality is also honorable.

The commitments invariably last for twenty turns, which is a game mechanic involving its own flaws and limitations. Peace treaties to end wars, for example, always include a twenty turn component, even though the description says "Will Last Until War is Redeclared." Trade deals for luxuries, rights of passage, or any deal involving resources or gold-per-turn, also last for twenty turns, or for at least twenty turns. The Honorable Diplomat and Trader meets with all his own commitments, and does not scheme behind the scenes to sabotage these deals.

Asking those without right of passage to depart your lands is also always honorable.

Using spies to investigate a city or expose an enemy spy is honorable.

DASTARDLY DIPLOMACY

Dastardly Diplomacy involves deception by way of breaking your commitments, or unprovoked aggression against peaceful civs.

Declaring war against a civ with whom you have ongoing commitments is dishonorable. The stain of dishonor falls on them if they declare unprovoked war on you.

Declaring war by any method or means against a civ with whom you have made peace in the last twenty turns is highly dishonorable. If they are the aggressors and declare unprovoked war on you, then the stain falls on them.

Setting up agreements in which you trade per-turn payments for durable goods (cash, techs, etc), then declare war to cancel the deals, getting something for almost nothing, is dastardly. The game is set up to handle this for trade deals, but not for peace treaties. For trade deals, this behavior is allowed.

Using spies to steal anything, sabotage production, or initiate propaganda is dastardly.

Demanding tribute is dastardly.

Renegotiating ongoing peace treaties to squeeze more concessions out of weak civs is dastardly.

DIPLOMACY EXPLOITS

"Phony Peace Treaty": In some areas, the game does not have reasonable, sensical, or sufficient penalties in place for dishonorable acts. The absolute worst such case involves peace treaties. Your diplomatic reputation in no way impacts peace treaty negotiations and AI concessions given in trade for twenty turns of peace. Even when you establish your civ's policies to be the most vile, cheatful, deceptive policy, the AI's still blindly trust your word when it comes to peace treaties, and this is both unfathomable and imbalancing to the game.

Making Phony Peace Treaties to wring free concessions out of the AI's, then turning around to declare war again immediately or at your next convenience, is exploitative. You could do it once, but your word would then be dirt at the peace treaty negotiation table, and realistically, no civ would offer you concessions for peace thereafter, not until there was a regime change at least -- but in Civ3 there is never a regime change, you are like an immortal with absolute control over your civ for its entire history, so there are limits in applying history to this circumstance. For the purposes of RBCiv Epics, phony treaties are never allowed. It may be possible to compensate for the AI's overly trusting nature, its inability to discern when its better off staying in a permanent state of war with your civ than making phony peace with you on your terms, but that would become convoluted and it would also be controversial. We need to keep our standards simple, so unless and until such time as a future patch addresses this loophole, no Phony Peace Treaties. If you accept cities or technologies as part of AI concessions for peace, you are required to honorably observe the full twenty turn duration of the peace treaty. Maps, chump change, and per-turn agreements (including any sum of gold per turn) do not rise to the level of exploitive, so are not concessions that would prevent you from breaking a treaty at your pleasure.

"Sabotaging Trade" is an exploit. Intentionally breaking the trade route (pillaging a road, selling off your harbor, etc) after selling per-turn goods for lump sum payments, or acquiring lump sum goods (like techs) for per-turn payments, is exploitive. The game is not programmed to deal with this kind of piracy and fraud appropriately. Even though it could nominally have a place in the game, the game isn't set up for it, so for RBCiv Epics events, this move is not allowed.

"Instant Palace": abandoning your capital earlyish in the game, for the purposes of moving the Palace without having to build a new Palace -- especially by way of disbanding your capital by building a settler, then resettling -- is exploitive.

"Grand Theft": If you steal tech and you grab the one you are currently researching, you get the select next tech popup. If you then click "The Big Picture", you don't go to the tech screen but to the steal tech screen, where you can steal another. This is strictly prohibited.

HONORABLE DECLARATIONS OF WAR

Every civ has a right to defend itself. A just war is one in which you are not the aggressor. If any civ attacks you unprovoked, you are entitled to remain at war with them and to take retaliatory action upon their lands for as long as you wish, up to and including their unconditional surrender (conquest).

The game recognizes this concept by automatically declaring war against civs who provoke you by launching sneak attacks. They would also do so if another civ settled on lands within your borders, or pillaged any lands within your borders. Likewise, if you do these things to them, the game declares war automatically, recognizing these as acts of war. There are also some events that would be or should be acts of war, that the game is not programmed to handle. These will be listed under exploits, since the game allows you to get away with them without appropriate declarations of war.

If you form alliances against a civ that has not provoked you, but has attacked your neighbor or ally, then your war is a just war only if you act defensively, to help and protect that ally. If you seize the opportunity to make territorial gains against the enemy, who has not directly provoked you, or to wreak destruction upon his lands, that crosses over into making you an aggressor, which is not honorable.

Any declaration of war under which you fight only inside your own borders is honorable, provided that you violate no diplomatic bargains in the process. This would include the right to head off anything you deem to be a sneak attack in the making, or to attack offending units of any civ who refuses to vacate your territory when asked, or to trigger a military golden age with operations against aggressors or trespassers inside your own lands.

DASTARDLY DECLARATIONS OF WAR

An unprovoked war is one in which you are the aggressor. A dastardly war is one that is unprovoked, in which you take aggressive action against the forces, assets, or holdings of another civ. If you have designs on the territory of your neighbors and you attack them to seize land, populations, strategic positions or resources, or to set them back by destroying their units, capturing their workers or settlers, pillaging their lands and particularly razing their cities, this is dastardly.

If you form alliances against a civ that has not provoked you, then take aggressive action against them on their lands or in neutral territories, this is dastardly.

If you declare war (or enter into alliances, including MPP's) for the purpose of voiding diplomatic or trade deals, this is dastardly.

If you enter into Mutual Protection Pacts with dastardly AI civs, who then pull you into wars, if any diplomatic or trade deals are violated in the process, this is dastardly in a way that falls on you, so be very careful with MPP's involving any scenario where Honorable game play is a goal or rule.

HONORABLE WARFARE

War is Hell.

If an aggressor has declared war against you, all of their forces, cities and territory are fair game.

If you are the aggressor in declaring war, your actions remain honorable only so long as your war is defensive in nature, that is, all the fighting takes place inside your original borders (before the war began) or the original borders of your declared allies. Additionally, any cities that were originally your allies must be gifted back to him ON THE SAME TURN that they are captured.

If there are forces in your territory without your permission (Right of Passage), you may attack them at any time, but may not use this as a pretext for wars of aggression. If you demand that AI forces withdraw, they may say OK and then ignore you; however, if you demand on two consecutive turns that AI forces withdraw or declare war, on the second turn they are forced to choose. If they then declare war on you, they are the aggressor. If you declare war first, or ambush the offending units, you are within your rights, but may not extend this into a war of aggression without crossing the line over into dastardly.

Razing cities is not honorable. Neither is abandoning (destroying) captured enemy cities (as this amounts to razing after the fact).

Giving away captured cities is only honorable if they are given to an ally who owned them when the war began. Giving cities to a neutral third-party or to another aggressor is dastardly.

The game autorazes small, uncultured settlements, and though this is not exactly honorable in principle, it is beyond the player's control, so for purposes of RBCiv Epics, this is honorable warfare.

Nuclear weapons may only be used honorably in retaliation vs a civ who has launched a "First Strike" nuclear attack, and then only with a "proportional response": you may honorably return fire with as many shots as were launched by the enemy, but no more. Nukes fired at your DECLARED allies (alliance or MPP active at the time of the attack) also count (for proportionality purposes) as having been fired at you. NOTE: enemy shots that were deflected by your strategic defenses still count as shots fired at you.

DASTARDLY WARFARE

Razing cities, when you have the option to capture them, is dastardly.

Abandoning cities with the abandon feature is dastardly. (What happens to the people? They all seem to be put to the sword, so to speak).

Trading captured cities to third parties, in lieu of razing but to get a similar effect, is dastardly.

Intentionally starving cities in a way that causes avoidable population reduction is dastardly.

"Surprise Attack" is defined as entering enemy territory with the intention of attacking on later rounds, without first declaring war via diplomatic channels, so as to gain a positional advantage through deception, delaying the enemy response. Surprise attacks are dastardly.

Failing to exit a civ's territory after agreeing to leave is dastardly.

Failing to wait an entire turn after canceling a Right of Passage before you attack, is dastardly.

Pillaging land improvements in neutral territory, to deny them to a rival or enemy, is dastardly.

"First Strike" use of nuclear weapons is considered extremely dastardly.

"Disproportional Response" use of nuclear weapons (firing back with more than were fired at you) is considered dastardly.

"Tactical Use" of nuclear weapons, to target enemy unit stacks (including ships), is dastardly.

WARFARE EXPLOITS

"RoP Rape": Using Right of Passage to move whole armies into attack position is an egregious exploit. The point being, the turn-based nature of the game in combination with this loophole in the rules offers a benefit way out of proportion to what even the most clever betrayal could ever hope to manage. No RoP Rapes in RBCiv Epics! This includes moving units into attack position then pulling some stunt to lead that civ to declare against you (like spy activity, or demanding they leave your territory) with the express intent of foiling the letter of this rule while still wholly pursuing the something-for-nothing spirit of this exploit. Don't go there.

"Spousal Abuse": It's possible for a civ you are at war with, or about to attack, to have an MPP with a nation with whom you have Right of Passage. If ANY action of yours results in the activation of that MPP, or will do so, you are not allowed to make use of the Right of Passage. You are especially prohibited from moving your troops across the RoP terrain and into attack position on either MPP partner. You are obliged, as a participant in RBCiv Epics events, to follow the spirit of this rule: no free military rides via RoP in a way that circumvents the cultural control of territory.

"Throwaway Cities": With the addition of the "Abandon City" feature, it is now possible to use settlers to indefinitely extend your cultural reach on any given turn. Given enough settlers, you can gain an effective RoP Rape without need for the RoP, by capturing or settling, moving a setter one tile further in, abandoning the old city, founding a new one, rinse and repeat. This is an unfortunate side effect of an otherwise reasonable and useful new option. To prevent the defeat of enemy zones of cultural control via throwaway cities, a number of prohibitions are now necessary: 1) You may not abandon a city on the same turn you capture it. 2) You may not abandon any captured city with active resisters remaining. 3) You are strictly prohibited from moving settlers into or through the territory of ANY city you intend to abandon. What you ARE allowed to do is to raze or abandon a city, let cultural borders adjust, then you can move the settlers through if you wish, coping with the enemy's cultural control zones.

"Whipping Loophole": When cities become so unhappy that they cannot sustain a single content face, it should be impossible to wring any more forced labor out of them. Yet there are still ways to do so, and these are all exploits. The most well known is that of adding workers to size 1 specialist-only cities to keep on whipping them.

"Cultural Push": Building cities within two tiles of existing cities, right on the edge of front lines, for the sole purpose of pushing back borders then repeating, such that you completely take over a rival's territory without having to declare war, is an exploit. This applies only to intentional use of the densest possible settlement patterns, on the front lines, to aggressively take over another civ's lands without a declared war. This kind of encroachment would qualify as an act of war, yet the game does not recognize it as such. This is not the same as settling close to the enemy or getting into a cultural war to control key resources or tiles along the border. This refers specifically to encroachment deep into rival territory by waves of cultural push. Doing this during peacetime is an exploit: you may do it during RBCiv Epics events only if you first declare war, just the same as if you were settling inside their territory.

"Baiting the AI": Although the AI has been VASTLY improved since the days of the release version when it would sell out its whole strategic position to capture a worker anywhere within a billion miles of its units, there is still some exploitive factor in using workers as sacrificial lamb targets to bait the AI into exposed positions or delay or weaken an attack by diverting the enemy.

"Puppet Strings": During a war, when enemy units (yours or those of another AI) move into attack range of an AI city, that AI's whole offensive army will move toward the endangered city. This is not something you can avoid, even, if you send out raiders to pillage or an assault force to attack. However, it can be exploited in such a way as to paralyze an enemy force, pulling their puppet strings to make them dance back and forth. Moving a diversionary unit or attack near an enemy city, then moving in and out and in and out of attack range, to pull the puppet strings, is an exploit. This exploit was discovered by Cyrene and confirmed by Sirian in RBD9 SG. This also explains why AI's who come under attack by an alliance of civs usually crumble so quickly: their units get locked into unintended puppet string manipulations by frequent enemy attacks, and their armies are paralyzed with indecision over being yanked around, and the civ gets torn apart. To some degree, the AI is so dumb in this regard it can't be helped, so don't make special effort to work around this flaw, but likewise don't go out of your way to exploit this during any RBCiv Epics games.

HONORABLE SHIPPING

All ships except privateers may be built and operated honorably. Honorable captains take precautions to preserve the lives of their crews by making sure to end their turn in safe waters.

DASTARDLY SHIPPING

Building Privateers is dastardly.

Causing any ship to end its turn in unsafe waters -- especially by way of using "suicide galleys" to try to explore across oceanic waters -- is dastardly.

Launching tactical nuclear weapons from submarines is dastardly.

SHIPPING EXPLOITS

"Chaining Ships": Transferring units from ship to ship while at sea, is an exploit. Note: making transfers while in port is not covered by this, and remains legal. 

HONORABLE BLOCKADES

Any blockades of any sort conducted within your own cultural borders are honorable. You have the right to do what you please on your own soil or in your own waters, including the right to prevent anyone else moving through.

Since no civ has the right to evict you from neutral territory, the above blockade rights extend to occupying neutral lands, up to and including running interference to slow rival troops, scouts, or settlers, or to deny access to unclaimed resources, but not to completely cut off passage through a strait or along an isthmus, or at any choke points.

Any blockade in enemy territory, in the cause of a just war, is honorable.

DASTARDLY BLOCKADES

Blockades in neutral territory, or in the territory of friendly civs with whom you have Right of Passage, that completes cuts across and divides a landmass or body of water, preventing passage from one portion to another, is dastardly.

Any blockade in enemy territory as part of a war of aggression is just as dastardly as the rest of the war.

Any blockade using noncombat units as sacrificial lambs, to buy time by slowing enemy units, is dastardly, even on your own soil.

BLOCKADE EXPLOITS

"Resource Piracy": Sitting on resources inside the borders of any rival, for the purpose of denying them these resources, is an act of war. The game should, but does not, recognize this, thus it is possible either by RoP or by returning over and over despite being asked or demanded to leave, to pull off such a blockade even though it is beyond unreasonable. As such, the moment another civ's borders extend to include a tile with a visible resource on it (luxury, strategic, or bonus) you are required either to permanently vacate the square, or to declare war. Piracy blockade is exploitive and not allowed in RBCiv Epics. This would extend to any blockade intended to deny access to or use of a tile to the civ who owns the land.

"Amphibious Blockades": It is possible to prevent ships from landing their units by blockading the shores. This is actually reasonable and realistic, but only if the blockade is an actual military one. As such, using noncombat units (scouts, workers, settlers, explorers, leaders, or artillery) to man the blockade, is exploitive, and should not be done. Military units must be used to set up any shore blockades.

PRODUCTION AND POPULATION EXPLOITS

"Dogpiling": Adding multiple workers to cities to increase population beyond the food supply, but faster than the one-per-turn starvation factor can erase, is an egregious loophole in the game. Realistically, ALL the people without food would starve. Thus, you are not allowed to add workers in any way that leads to starvation by design, for any purpose.

"Worker Draft": Adding workers to a city, then drafting a unit with that population, is normally fine. It could be possible to create a peacetime "worker camp" along the lines of the "whipping loophole", though, in that adding workers to a junk city could allow you to do heavy drafting. The drafting units could then be used for military purposes or disbanded for the shields, and the city could then be given away later to the AI, attacked and razed. This is clearly against the spirit of the game, and if done on a larger scale (say, dozens or hundreds of workers and multiple disposable cities) could provide a substantial gain. Thus, any use of "throwaway cities" to be drafted into oblivion by adding multiple workers to feed an artificial draft rate is an exploit.

"Seed Corn": When the AI's sell off too many of their workers too early, they are selling off their civ's "seed corn", so to speak, crippling themselves for negligible short term gains. Short Version: overbuying AI workers is now officially an exploit! Long version: This aspect may be addressed through the expansion, but for now it remains a serious balance issue. Players may not knowingly acquire the last two workers from any AI civ, until the year 1000BC has arrived. At that point, any number of worker buys are allowed. Until then, players must restrict worker buying using their honest best judgment. Deity games allow for more worker trades than other difficulties, including buying one of an AI's three starting workers at any time. Emperor games should not buy any workers until the civ has had time to produce a third (they start with two), which will be at least 2500BC. Monarch games should just avoid all worker trade until 1000BC, unless you see specific evidence to make you believe they have at least three workers. Less experienced players may have difficulties adhering to this, just use your best judgment. Community veterans will know how to follow this edict. No stealing the seed corn from stupid AI's.

INTERFACE EXPLOITS

"Free Wealth": If you set a city to wealth, you get the benefit of the cash it generates before the game goes through the city production rotation. Thus, if you zoom a city earlier in the queue, and "scroll ahead" to the wealth city, you can get double production on a given turn by assigning a project to the city after the wealth has already been tabulated, as the wealth benefit registers before the city's actual production turn comes up. All use of scroll ahead to get "free wealth" is prohibited.

"Shared Tile": You can use "scroll ahead" after a particular city has registered use of a tile in the production queue between turns, to reach a city that shares that tile but has not taken its turn yet, to "work a tile" on the same turn by more than one city. Any deliberate use of scroll ahead to share tiles is prohibited.

"Instant Military": You can use "scroll ahead" after the AI's movement phase has completed, but before the turn ends, during the between phase, which opens the possibility of being able to react to the AI move in an exploitive way, allowing you to play underdefended and rush Instant Military any time you need it. Two actions are still allowed. Action One: Scrolling ahead to repair tile arrangements screwed up by the invasion of military units (to override the pathetic auto-governor's poor choices) is still allowed. Action Two: scrolling ahead to make use of technology discovered on that turn is still allowed, regardless of what the AI's are doing. All other scroll ahead action in response to AI moves between turns is now prohibited.

"Free Healing": Normally, if a unit moves, it is not supposed to heal at the end of that turn. However, when the game is saved and loaded, the "has moved" flag is not maintained. It is redetermined from movement remaining. If a damaged unit can make it to a barracks city without using any movement -- via rails and "sailing port to port" -- and you save and then load the game, it will heal at the end of that turn. Saving and reloading to deliberately gain free healing is prohibited.

"The Big Picture": On any turn after discovering new tech, you can click "What's the Big Picture", and from there get to any of the operational menus with the Function keys. This opens all manner of between-turn access, even before you get into the production queue, with a number of loopholes and exploits opened up. ALL use of clicking "The Big Picture" between turns to gain deliberate access to menus is now prohibited. Any use of scroll ahead for legitimate purposes must come through zooming during the production cycle.

TACTICS EVALUATION

This list is a work in progress. Future patches could change the balance of power to any of these aspects, add or remove exploits and options, etc. Likewise, further gameplay could reveal more options. If you know of anything you believe to be important that is not covered here, please drop us a line or post to the forum.

Likewise, if you participate in RBCiv Epics events and enjoy the spirit of our endeavors and want to offer opinions, insights or feedback on any of this evaluation, we're interested in what you have to say.