MOO1 Exploit List

[Zed-F]

UR planets transferring reserve funds to themselves or to Artifact worlds: Not sure this fits the definition of an exploit, since it doesn't directly cause any problems for the AI and since it doesn't really seem to be game-breaking. I've never been in a game where I have said to myself 'Aha, now that I can transfer my reserves to this UR world, I win!' So while it might be a small design oversight, depending on whether it was intentional on the part of the game designers, it doesn't really seem to me to be something worth making a rule about.

Scout patrol being the practice of leaving a single scout at every world in reach to dissuade the AI from settling those worlds? It is generally trivial for the AI to kick that scout off with a handful of warships, and it will in fact do that, but perhaps not with the frequency one might expect. A case could be made that this is something the AI just doesn't know how to handle as well as it ought to, but I'm not sure whether it's a strong enough case to label scout patrols as an exploit. My own leaning is to keep this as variant fodder rather than to disallow it entirely.

[dathon]

On scout patrols...

At high levels, they are often necessary for the player to have ANY chance at grabbing a decent share of land. I agree with Zed, I wouldn't even call it an exploit, but an optional rule to take off the table for variants, just as you might disallow trading, espionage, etc. I'm here to write up the exploit list, so look for that in a little while

dathon

[dathon]

Ok, here is a first-draft of a ruleset to eliminate exploits. I like ignatius' suggestion that we append these as part of the scenario information for new games, with the option of allowing/disallowing tactics as the game dictates. For Imperium, the creator could choose to allow these tactics, but give special honor to games that win without them. Comment/disagreement/discussion/suggestions are of course encouraged. I've tried to represent what I see is the prevailing "mood" for each item based on the limited discussion thus far.


Tactical Screen Exploits

Yo-yo Exploit: Player must move missile ships forward on the tactical screen as far as the maximum range for the missiles it carries. The point is to move the ships close enough so that the AI will not retreat from the missiles. Firing missiles on the way to the maximum range, causing AI retreats, is acceptable.

Retreating Ships: All ships which require ammunition (bombs, missiles, spores) must retreat to a friendly base to “re-load” after using their armament in combat. All other ships are free to retreat wherever they choose, including staying in the same system.

Baiting: Player may not use unarmed ships to “bait” the AI to stay on the tactical screen to be destroyed by missile bases. Player may not build military ships solely for this purpose either.

Diplomacy Exploits

Spectator Wars: Player may not ask a race to declare war on another unless he is “at war” or going to be within 10 turns. “At War” means either already in hot war, or about to attack and cause hot war.
OPTIONAL EXCEPTION: If the player feels that he will lose the next council vote, he may start a spectator war to avoid the loss. This should be used as a last resort.

Threatening: A player may only use threats for the sole purpose of turning around an inbound AI fleet.
OPTIONAL ADDITION: If player colonizes/invades a planet and finds that an AI fleet is already en route, player may not threaten to turn back the fleet.
OPTIONAL ADDITION: Player may only threaten each race X times.

Bribing: Player may not bribe any AI race more than once. This does NOT include items that the AI asks for to seal peace treaty or war declaration deals.

Tech Trading: Player may not trade a tech to an AI that it obviously cannot use, such as Soil Enrichment to the Silicoids, or IIT8 to a race that has IIT7 or better.

Biological Weapons Exploits

Invading Spore Planets: If a colony has been destroyed by biological weapons and invaded by the AI, player may not invade this world until the population is back to half the planet’s maximum size.

Sporing Planet from Tactical Screen: Player may not destroy a colony of an AI he is not already at war with using biological weapons from the tactical screen.

Watch List

Using the Wait Button

[Zed-F]

I'd like to keep things simple and obvious from a player control point of view. Most of these are ok from that point of view. For most of these, it's pretty obvious when you're abusing the exploit (assuming you understand what the exploit is) as it's a direct result of what the player is doing.

The one I'm not so happy with is the Invading Spore Planets exploit, because as worded it requires that the player keep track of all sporing that's going on in the game, even if the player's not the one that's doing it. Moreover, if the AIs are using spores regularly, there's no guarantee that the colony will ever come back up above 50% max pop... assuming you even know what that number actually is. And if you've never scouted the world in the first place, how do you know what its max pop is? What if you're going on an offensive tear and blitzing through enemy space, and come across one of these worlds? If you have the wherewithal to take the world anyway... what difference does it make whether it was spored?

I agree that the AI doesn't know how to recover a planet that has seen a lot of spore action into a viable colony, and that exploiting this weakness is a potentially easy way to get lots of tech on the cheap. Is there some other way we can say 'don't do that' without requiring the player to be super-vigilant about what the AIs are doing to one another?

I've never actually seen this in an SG anyway. Should we just move it to the watch list and formulate a rule when it becomes a problem?

[Olorin]

Zed has a good point.

I think that we should restrict the enforcement of the spore rule to only when the player is the one using the spores.

Invasion of spored worlds: If a player may not take a world via ground invasion that they recently destroyed using bio-weapons. Any new population must be killed off, and the colony established with a colony ship.

---This would not require the player to know what the AIs are doing to each other, but prevent the worst part of the exploit--when you empty a planet, wait for an AI to colonize it, and then swoop in for the tech. We might also include on the watch list, the taking of a recently spored world when the AIs do it to each other, for the purpose of stealing tech. It's one thing to "accidentally" benefit from this when marching across the galaxy with a superior fleet (you would get the tech from other conquests anyway). It's a bit different if you are watching the AIs duke it out nearby, and try to swoop in for free tech because you are too weak to invade anything else.

[dathon]

I've never actually seen this in an SG anyway. Should we just move it to the watch list and formulate a rule when it becomes a problem?

True, but I was trying to think ahead to Imperium games as well. Most exploits aren't much of a problem in SG's, but could throw comparisons out of whack for the Imperia. I tried to keep everything as simple and explicit as I could. But I see your point about that rule. Unfortunately, I can't think of a better way to word it. Olorin's revision is simple, but I don't think it covers enough of what's exploitive. Since player rarely uses spores (at least from what I've seen here), this is mostly going to come up from AI sporings. Heck, a viable bait-and-switch might be leave some frontline planets open, wait for the spores, and take them back. Instant tech. But maybe that won't come up too often. Let me think on that another night.

dathon

[Blake]

Okay here's my take on the sporing issue:

Spore Tech Swindle:
Player may not capture by ground invasion a recently spored world which has intact factories far beyond the present population's capacity to utilize them (exception, planets with less than 50 factories may always be invaded). Player may choose to bomb or spore out the population and recolonize with a colony ship.

Sporing from Tactical Screen:
Player may not use spores during combat against an AI they are maintaining peace with. Player must also perform actions which the AI will recognize as being aggressive, such as destroying ships or sporing from the main screen.

I suggest having no rule about genocide. Realistically, if you're genociding a race then the game is probably already over except for mopup.
Also going easy on tactical sporing is probably best since the AI does it so much.

[ignatius]

Ok, here is a first-draft of a ruleset to eliminate exploits. [...] Comment/disagreement/discussion/suggestions are of course encouraged.

A few general remarks:

I'm not sure if all listed tactics really qualify as exploits or not just as (sometimes powerful) tactics, which are nevertheless meant to be there. Banning the latter can make for interesting variant rules, but IMO should not be part of a permanent blacklist.

Exploiting the rules to play as in "playing the best strategy the game allows as good as you can" is where the fun comes from playing 4X games. For this to work, a rule has to be clear, objective and as narrow as possible in scope. A good rule has no "spirit" nor does it not need one as it should be able to stand for itself.

Rules with qualifiers like "... unless it would lose you the vote" or "... only if the deal is good for the AI" are somewhat like a speed limit in a car race. Ultimately, they ruin the fun as their general idea amounts to "you may play but you may not play too good". In addition to that, they are unclear as they are by nature subjective.

For the latter reason, I also generally dislike any rules which refer to future events like a vote that might be lost or a war that will have to be started in 10 turns. Also, what happens if circumstance change, like if the AI develops new tech which render our ships useless? In an SG context, rules which refer to the past are likewise problematic as they require careful bookkeeping (e.g. "may only be bribed once"). Ideally, any rule should always refer to the current game-state and not create or refer to an artificial legal "state" in addition to what is provided by the game itself.

The most problematic rules, which somewhat fall in the category of future events, are those that refer to the intention of the player (e.g. formulations like "... with the sole purpose of ..." or "... unless planning to ..."), as they require a really schizophrenic attitude to follow and assume that the player always has a plan in the first place and is not acting on instinct, gut-feeling or a whim. This make such rules arbitary as the same thing in the same situation can be allowed or forbidden, depending on the mindset of the player. Also, they are not verifyable as even genuine intentions may not need to translate into actions if circumstances change.

An alternative way to handle many (esp. the tactical) expolits in an SG setting which has not yet been mentioned, would be to simply leave the decision up to the player for his turnset. Only tactics with directly affect or preemt later decisions (diplomacy, tactics with impact on ship design or base building) would then require regulation

I will comment on the current list of expolits with this principles in mind. Of course, comments are wellcome:

Yo-yo Exploit: Player must move missile ships forward on the tactical screen as far as the maximum range for the missiles it carries. The point is to move the ships close enough so that the AI will not retreat from the missiles. Firing missiles on the way to the maximum range, causing AI retreats, is acceptable.

This refers to an intention. If the player lacks battle scanners or doesn't know the stats of all weapons, it might even be impossible for the player to make an informed fight-or-flight decision at this point (so there exists no intention to refer to at all yet).

A better rule IMO would be to allow the first voley to be fired at will and only apply the rule to subsequent voleys (This still allows for one "yoyo" round, though)

Retreating Ships: All ships which require ammunition (bombs, missiles, spores) must retreat to a friendly base to “re-load” after using their armament in combat. All other ships are free to retreat wherever they choose, including staying in the same system.

refers to a future event (the base might not be "friendly" anymore on arrival), also requires bookeeping at turnset handover and with hyperspace communication. The idea that ships are reloaded in transit or after claiming orbit would be easier to implement (it would still require bookeeping at turnset handover, but as the rule creates a new state, this is unavoidable).

Baiting: Player may not use unarmed ships to “bait” the AI to stay on the tactical screen to be destroyed by missile bases. Player may not build military ships solely for this purpose either.

intentional rule. Clearer and shorter "unarmed ships have to retreat on their first turn when friendly missle bases are present.".

Spectator Wars: Player may not ask a race to declare war on another unless he is “at war” or going to be within 10 turns. “At War” means either already in hot war, or about to attack and cause hot war.

Again, this formulation is about intentions and speculation on futur events (to make things worse, in this case, usually events in the next player's turnset) which are not even enforcable (no war declarations in MOO).

".. or has neither active trade/treaties and the AI diplomat is gone before asking" would acheive pretty much the same thing (preventing frivolous war-mongering) in a stateless way (rather, the absence status for the AI diplomat is used to keep state). To make him absent, you would have to somehow piss the AI off (e.g. by breaking trade or a threat) and his absence will prevent you from rebuilding relations immediately afterwards. Very risky business unless you really intend to go to war or need to prevent a lost vote.


The remaining rules, I do not consider to constitute exploits at all, but this if course a matter of personal taste:

Threatening: A player may only use threats for the sole purpose of turning around an inbound AI fleet.
OPTIONAL ADDITION (1): If player colonizes/invades a planet and finds that an AI fleet is already en route, player may not threaten to turn back the fleet.
OPTIONAL ADDITION (2): Player may only threaten each race X times.

The rule is fine and simple (although I have yet to see someone make a threat if not for turning back a fleet), the addtions are problematic: (1) because you cannot always tell when an AI fleet was sent enroute, (2) because it generates a state and requires bookkeeping

Bribing: Player may not bribe any AI race more than once. This does NOT include items that the AI asks for to seal peace treaty or war declaration deals.

Requires bookkeeping. Also I have yet to see someone offering a bribe in an SG game (and I lurked a lot).

Tech Trading: Player may not trade a tech to an AI that it obviously cannot use, such as Soil Enrichment to the Silicoids, or IIT8 to a race that has IIT7 or better.

No tech can possibly be useless unless the AI is already at techlevel 99. Also, the rule requires the player to know the AI's techs.

Invading Spore Planets: If a colony has been destroyed by biological weapons and invaded by the AI, player may not invade this world until the population is back to half the planet’s maximum size.

Zed already pointed out the problems with this rule.

Sporing Planet from Tactical Screen: Player may not destroy a colony of an AI he is not already at war with using biological weapons from the tactical screen.

This would be OK as a variant rule, but I don't think that it constitutes a genuine expoint as the AI happily does it all the time.

cu

ignatius

[Olorin]

@ignatius: You bring up some good points.

About spectator wars, it's tough to come up with a clear rule to prevent sideline warmongering, since the Human player doesn't have a declare war option.

How about this: You may not ask a race to go to war with anyone that you have a trade agreement, NAP, or alliance with, unless they have already successfully attacked one of your planets, and their diplomat is gone.

This would require the player to first break their trade agreement with the target race, which will be a big relations hit. And if an AI sent in a fleet, and an attempted threat didn't work, you have to wait for their diplomat to return, in order to break the trade agreement, or for their fleet to attack before asking other races to declare war (a successful attack being one that either destroys the planet, or the AI gains control of the orbit, allowing them to send in troops).

Retreating ships: I think a simpler rule would be,
Ships that retreat from combat, cannot redirect to the same planet unless they retreated on their first turn.

Still allows a recovery from a mistimed coordinated attack--early ships can retreat immediately and redirect to same planet to join the rest of the fleet, but prevents hit and run attacks without first going somewhere else.

Tactical Sporing:

I still think we need to be in a hot war to spore out planets in combat. Otherwise it would be possible to be at 'relaxed', with a NAP and trade agreements in place the entire time you genocided a race (as long as you avoided killing their ships). This is obviously a bug since the AI doesn't correctly recognize that you are the source of the deaths due to sporing (and why GNN reports that the Alkari were genocided by the Alkari). There are plenty of ways to tick off an AI enough to get into a war by the time you have viable spore ships. Dial them up and break agreements, blow up a bunch of their ships, find one of their planets with little or no bases, and spore it out via the bombardment screen, etc.

Tech Trading:

I don't think this rule should be tossed out. I don't think anyone expects that you have to insert a spy to make sure the AI didn't get the next level of IIT since the last report. But it is a good idea to check the AI tech before attempting trades to see what they have. If you KNOW that the AI already has IT50, then don't trade them IT30. If you don't remember what they had, then don't worry about it. The biggest ones would be clean up techs or soil enrichment to the Silicoids, since they can never use them (besides for the +1 to their tech level).

Besides the Silicoids, I don't think I've seen the AI offering me anything decent and then asking for an inferior IIT, Range, Engine, Armor, etc. compared to what they already have. Someone out there can correct me, but does the AI even consider trading anything for Range 6 if they've already got Range 8? If not, then we really only need a rule about what not to trade to the Silicoids.

[dathon]

Exploiting the rules to play as in "playing the best strategy the game allows as good as you can" is where the fun comes from playing 4X games.

Actually, I think you'll find a lot of people in the RB community that disagree with that statement.

to seek challenge and fun, not simply 'high score' or 'the most elite stuff!'

The secondary ideal is to seek challenge. If a game has a flaw in the design that can be exploited to massive advantage, we may agree as a community to restrict use of the option, or even ban it from our collective activities. That is to say, we may add our own rules to enhance the game environment (...) Just because the software allows you to do something, or cannot prevent you from doing something, doesn't mean (in our view) that it must be exploited. We believe the game is more fun to play without this option. Moves of this category are labeled "exploits" and taken off the table. We don't rush in to add rules for the sake of adding rules. The rules evolve over time, in response to imbalances or loopholes in the game that undermine enjoyment or defy reason.

I took the above two quotes from the "About RB" page (emphasis mine). Realms Beyond has always strived to increase the challenge of games, and the growth of players, by eliminating exploitive flaws from our games. The ROP rape from Civ 3 was the perfect example. This maneuver allowed the player to bypass the turn-based nature of the game, effectively moving his army and attacking anywhere in rival territory without any chance of reprisal. This trick worked so well that it could be used in virtually any situation, with guaranteed success, and netted the player more gain than he could secure by any other means. It became the "one right answer" to just about every game.

The problem with this is that it's a hollow victory. What's the point in exploiting the same flaw in the game mechanics over and over ad nauseam? What does that prove, except that the AI of the game is not coded to handle a specific situation? And what does that do for the player in the long run? He does not learn anything or become a better player by using the same broken tactic over and over again. Moreover, what's the point in playing if you cannot lose, and the path to victory is the same one used a hundred times before?

An alternative way to handle many (esp. the tactical) expolits in an SG setting which has not yet been mentioned, would be to simply leave the decision up to the player for his turnset. Only tactics with directly affect or preemt later decisions (diplomacy, tactics with impact on ship design or base building) would then require regulation

The problem with this is that all decisions have an impact on the game. If I choose to use the yo-yo exploit to eliminate a rival's largest fleet, the ramifications of that action will impact everybody's turns for the rest of the game. If you're following me in the turn order, you may now have carte blanche to invade that rival with a clearly inferior fleet.

I agree that writing good rules is extremely difficult. One only has to glance at the volume of debate and work put into generating the Civ 3 exploit list, and CIV possible exploit list, to see that. And I agree that where possible, a rule should not need an interpretation (spirit) to function. However, some concepts don't lend themselves to simple hard-and-fast rules because the exploit come from the degree of use. ICS from Civ 3 was a good example of that. How many cities constitutes an ICS attack? How close do they have to be before it's considered exploitive? What about legitimate close placements for resource acquisition/denial, tactical concerns, etc? How many are allowed before it's exploitive? It's easy to see the extremes. 1-2 cities, ok. Dedicated attack with several dozen on multiple fronts, not ok. But where's the line? That's very hard to determine. And that's where the "spirit" of the law must come into play.

We can debate until the cows come home on what maneuvers exactly constitute "pinning" an AI fleet on the tactical screen. However, I think it's pretty obvious when the intent is there. I don't think that spending a lot of time debating semantics of what "is" and "is not" allowed, trying to find just how far a certain tactic can be pushed until it falls afoul of the rules is constructive. Rather, analyzing the game and devising new strategies and tactics to win is a better use of time. And for RB players, that's what it's all about. That's where the challenge, growth, and fun come from.

dathon